Artist: Run The Jewels
Album: RTJ4
Date Released: June 3rd, 2020
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Artist Background
The duo consisting of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, and legendary underground produceMC El-P, known together as Run The Jewels, originally came together as a result of Adult Swim executive Jason DeMarco who introduced the two in 2011. After his 2011 album PL3DGE peaked at #115 on the US charts, Killer Mike told Jason that he wanted to make his own AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Jason informed Mike, “If you want AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted modernized, the only producer I know who comes close to the Bomb Squad-level of production is El-P”. The duo’s chemistry was immediate, as El-P went on to produce all of Killer Mike’s 2012 last solo album R.A.P. Music, and Mike featured on El-P’s final solo album Cancer 4 Cure. Mike and El’s respective albums released within a week of each other in May 2012, and the two embarked on a twenty-city US tour in the following months. After returning from tour, the pair had found a friendship growing between themselves, and made the decision to put other projects on hold and focus on the chemistry that had been sparked. Recording at an upstate NY studio beginning in April 2013, the duo re-appropriated the phrase “Run The Jewels” from the LL Cool J track “Cheesy Rat Blues", and released their self-titled collaborative album, for free via digital download, only a mere 2 months later in June 2013.
36” Chain vs. Pistol & Fist
Run The Jewels discography currently exists in a distinct pairing. With Run The Jewels as their debut, this record set the group's tone as a light-hearted, braggadocious duo with as much confidence in their abilities as swag in their punchlines. Just over a year later, the sequel Run The Jewels 2 took the foundation set from their freshman effort and dialed the insanity up to 11. RTJ2 pushed the boundaries of their aggression and flows to new heights; with incredible energy in their verses, and absolutely impeccable beats, blending El-P’s signature industrial sound with sharp synth arpeggios, chopped Zach De La Rocha vocals, and absolutely bonkers Travis Barker drums.
It was then nearly 3 years before Jamie and Mike followed up their breakout RTJ2, with Run The Jewels 3 being released again ahead of its scheduled release date via free digital download, this time on Christmas Eve 2016. Instead of these two attempting to outdo the pure insanity and in-your-face attitude found in their predecessor, Mike and El decide to evolve themselves as a group. The duo had noticeably pulled back on the swag and dick jokes which made such a splash on RTJ2, instead choosing a more subdued, electronic approach to their beats, as well as a clearly stronger political approach in their lyrics. This change in sound and style is demonstrated in the album cover’s artwork. The first two records featured the distinctive RTJ “Pistol and Fist”, with the fist tightly gripping a chain. The chain, in my opinion, represents the swag and braggadocio that drove the aggressive nature of their first two albums. In RTJ3 the chain is removed, leaving only hands that have transformed from bleeding and bandaged, to a pristine gold.
This brings us to early 2020. It’s been nearly 4 years of living in a post-Trump America, and El-P announces that Run The Jewels fourth record has been completed. Mike and El live-stream the first single “yankee and the brave” on Instagram on March 22nd, 2020. Lyrically and sonically, RTJ4 exists as the successor to Run The Jewels 3, with Mike and El again taking the good from their previous effort and launching it into the creative stratosphere. El-P’s beats are again leaning towards the synthetic, electronic side, this time with the intensity dialed all the way up to 11. From a lyrical perspective, RTJ takes the politically-charged lyrics from their predecessor, and again, up the ante, laying down some of the hardest hitting and politically poignant bars either of these two have ever spit.
Album Review
2020 was a year that none of us will soon forget. An unprecedented global health crisis kept the majority of us inside for months at a time. RTJ4 was announced on May 12th, 2020, with a release date slated for June 5th, 2020. However, with 2020 as the gift that won’t stop giving, the end of May was highlighted by the unjust killing of George Floyd. The phrase heard around the world, “I can’t breathe” instantly became a rally-cry for the oppressed to finally take to the streets to demand systemic police reform, as Floyd’s death was not the first time this phrase was uttered in an unjust police killing. In fact, a 2020 study by the New York Times showed that at least 70 people have died in police custody after using the same phrase over the past decade. As millions of American’s began organizing protests and demonstrations in the wake of Floyd’s death, Run The Jewels made the decision to release their latest chapter two days ahead of the scheduled release. El-P tweeted, just minutes ahead of the drop, “Fuck it, why wait. The world is infested with bullshit, so here’s something raw to listen to while you deal with it all. We hope it brings you some joy. Stay safe and hopeful out there and thank you for giving 2 friends the chance to be heard and do what they love”. In line with all past Run The Jewels releases, the album was made available for free digital download, two days ahead of its scheduled release date, on June 3rd, 2020.
THE RETURN (we don’t mean no harm but we truly mean all the disrespect)
RTJ4 opens with the first single, “yankee and the brave (ep. 4)”. Using the team names from their respective hometown baseball teams, Mike and El use the opening track to prove that they’re not just a hip-hop duo, they’re brothers, for better or worse. El-P kicks this installment off with rapid-fire, machine-gun esque snares, matching Killer Mike’s aggressive flow and tightly packed rhymes, before El jumps in to trade some dense rhymes as well. Mike and El depict themselves as outlaws, with Mike surrounded by cops with only one bullet remaining. He contemplates suicide instead of allowing the police to take him alive, until El-P jumps back in, offering Mike a way out, with a getaway car waiting outside. This tense situation is depicted lightheartedly in this song’s music video, which was released via Adult Swim and features the duo animated.
The trade-off between Mike and El’s short verses are reminiscent of late-80’s EPMD flows, while the production sounds like boom-bap that’s been sent to us from the future. This distinctive blend of old-school rap roots and forward thinking production is what continues to separate Run The Jewels from absolutely all of their contemporaries. While so many artists are continually playing catch-up with the latest trends, RTJ are side-stepping the trendy and moving forward with the mind-bending.
FLEXIN’ (ayo one for mayhem, two for mischief)
The second single “ooh la la” samples a Gang Star track "DWYCK (feat. Nice & Smooth)" as the basis for the chorus. I say “samples” as that’s how it is credited in the album’s liner notes, however it’s truly an interpolation of Greg Nice’s bar, slowed down slightly, and sung by El-P and Greg Nice himself. El-P is a true old-head at heart, and it’s abundantly obvious in his work, even going as far as to recruit legendary producer DJ Premiere to handle the scratching on the back end of this banger.
Out of key piano chords are looped to quickly create an unsettling aura surrounding the track, before El-P’s voice cuts through the infectious piano like a whip. Pounding, up-tempo drums are introduced after the chorus’ first iteration, creating what is possibly El-P’s first danceable beat. Lyrically, Mike and El-P initially seem scattered on this track, however the music video quickly makes their point very obvious.

”we imagined the world on the day that the age old struggle of class was finally over. a day that humanity, empathy and community were victorious over the forces that would separate us based on arbitrary systems created by man.
this video is a fantasy of waking up on a day that there is no monetary system, no dividing line, no false construct to tell our fellow man that they are less or more than anyone else. not that people are without but that the whole meaning of money has vanished. that we have somehow solved our self created caste system and can now start fresh with love, hope and celebration. its a dream of humanity’s V-DAY… and the party we know would pop off.”

The video envisions a society celebrating the fact that the class system we currently exist within has finally imploded. Money is worthless, and we have rejected the desire to bind ourselves to the constraints of capitalism. All creeds and colors unite to burn the system that has so effectively controlled us for over a century. It’s a party, and if there was a song to celebrate the end of the world as it is currently known, “ooh la la” is that song.
Mike’s last verse features a few metaphors and comparisons celebrating the destruction of capitalism, saving the most poignant for last:

I used to love Bruce, but livin' my vida loca
Helped me understand I'm probably more of a Joker
When we usher in chaos, just know that we did it smiling
Cannibals on this island, inmates run the asylum

Premo’s expertly cut scratches lead us into the equally hard hitting sample flip of “Misdemeanor”, by Foster Stevens as the basis for the beat to “out of sight”. Lending yet another nod to the old-school greats that laid the foundation for RTJ, “out of sight” samples the same track as The D.O.C.’s “It’s Funky Enough”, only adding a bouncy, electronic synth atop the inverted chord hits, and uptempo, industrial drums, to create an absolutely infectious groove for Mike and El’s dynamic chemistry to shine, rapidly jumping between each other’s two line flows in the first verse.
“out of sight” shows each MC providing insight into how each of them earned a living and achieved their current status. Mike and El’s opening verse each details themselves robbing people in order to eat. El alludes to the fact that he crossed his accomplices in crime for the whole bag, while Mike details the fact his assailant tells him it’s an “honor” to be robbed by his mother’s only son.
While El-P’s production is the obvious stand out on first listen, Killer Mike comes through with one of the most sonically pleasing and technically proficient verses of 2020.

We the motivating, devastating, captivating
Ghost and Rae relating product of the fuckin' '80s
Coke dealin' babies, never regulating, bag accumulating
It would not be overstating to say they are underrating
The pride of Brooklyn and the Grady, baby
We don't need no compliments or confidence
Our attitude and latitude is "fuck you, pay me"

The dense, intricate rhyme schemes smack you in the face, almost distracting you from Mike’s delivery and blistering flow on the verse; flexing his legendary status while paying homage to his drug-dealing past. This absolutely stunning display of technical skill, story telling, and complex rhyming illustrates how RTJ seamlessly integrates the best of both old school and new school hip-hop.
“out of sight” also features a guest verse from 2 Chainz, and he continues to lay the braggadocio on thick. Considering Tity Boi’s dedication to trap stylings, his verse feels right at home on the flex track, despite it’s late 80’s tribute sample, a considerable departure from his usual sound palette.
Up until this point, I haven’t mentioned any of the El-P’s lyrics specifically. El-P is a great rapper, but Killer Mike… Well, Killer Mike is an incredible rapper. He’s the guy who draws you in. El-P is the one who lays the foundation for greatness and Mike is the show stopper, and that’s generally the case for most RTJ tracks. But on “holy calamafuck”, El-P seems determined to make people stop and ask, “Who the fuck is this?!”.
A sharp, yet nearly minimalistic drum kit backing a heavily distorted synthesizer melody lays beneath rhymically knocking cow-bells. This aggressively set stage allows Mike and El to flex as the dynamic duo they are, until the beat suddenly takes a turn for the chaotic. A gnarled, ultra-menacing synth overtakes everything while Mike screams into the abyss, until a distorted snare, enormous 808s, and skeletal hi-hats cut through and launch the beat switch into another dimension. The minimal, yet incredibly dark soundscape allows El-P to snap in a way I have never heard from him previously. His rhymes schemes are reminiscent of an old MF DOOM lyric notebook, while his topics flawlessly combine flexing, psychedelic use, and his well-cemented legacy in the hip-hop community. Cutting and pasting a few of his bars into this review could not convey a fraction of how stunning El-P’s performance on “holy calamafuck” is.
Slightly later in the track list, making liberal use of the Ether song “Gang of Four”, “the ground below” samples and loops the sharp guitar riff and adds aggressive, pounding drums as the basis for the beat; this is finally reminiscent of the forward-thinking, stridulous production El-P has built his reputation on. Capitalising on the classic RTJ moment, Mike and El both flex in their own unique ways. Mike compares himself to Godzilla taking on Tokyo, and El-P demands respect for his name as the legend he is, threatening to smack dying children for mispronouncing his name with his middle finger to the world; his complete disregard for human life and confidence in his abilities are summed up at the end of his verse.

You see a future where Run the Jewels ain’t the shit
Cancel my Hitler-killing trip
Turn the time machine back around a century

SO¢IAL JU$T-ICE (until my voice go from a shriek to whisper...)
While the first few tracks aren’t without their social and political themes, the back-end of RTJ4 is where Mike and El start to bust out the heavy topics. “goonies vs. E.T.”. starts off light, with El-P pointing to the irony of how once he finally started to make it “big” in the industry, the world began to descend into chaos due to climate changes, increasingly obvious social injustice, and political madness. He culminates his frustration with our disregard for the Earth with a fantastic quotable.

Fuck y’all got, another planet on stash?
Far from the fact of the flames and our trash
That is not snow, it is ash, and you gotta know
The past got a wrath, it’s a lover gone mad

Mike’s verse takes the light-hearted frustration expressed by El-P, and turns the aggression to the next level. Aiming his sights against the ruling class and their society that’s been designed to oppress people for profit, who have very meticulously painted themselves as celebrities and idols to the American public. Mike accepts that he will be villainized by these people for speaking against them, but he welcomes the nefarious role, knowing that the working class will eventually eat the rich, no matter how much they are stomped into the dirt.
And this is just the warmup.
If it’s possible for a song to represent a moment in time that captures the absolute shit storm that has been 2020, “walking in the snow” is that song. It’s release coincided perfectly with the protests for George Floyd which were sweeping the nation. Killer Mike’s verse directly references the phrase “I can’t breathe”, the last words of Eric Garner, which also happened to be the last words of Floyd as well. The fact that this verse was reportedly written in November 2019 perpetually underscores the importance of the content and perfectly represents how persistent this problem is. “walking in the snow” is a true encapsulation of both a defining moment in time and an ever-persisting issue.
But he doesn’t just stop at the racial injustice. Mike goes on an absolute rant about the American education system; how it’s not designed to teach people, but to discriminate against poor populations, limiting their legitimate opportunities, and therefore disproportionately leading them into a criminal lifestyle. He calls out the media as fear-mongers, and the apathy of the American public in the face of indecency. Fortunately for Mike, by the time we finally had the chance to hear this masterpiece, we were already on our feet, using this album as a war cry to mobilize against a tyrannical government that militarized against its own citizens simply for asking that we recognize systemic racism and demanding change. Killer Mike has the best verse of the year, no doubt in my mind.
The only drawback is that Mike’s verse is so fucking good that it completely overshadows El-P’s, which is also amazing. A menacing guitar riff and haunting synths kick the track off into a bouncy groove, where El-P unleashes a flurry of internal rhymes that does not relent for about half his verse. Even adding layers of social commentary within the densely packed bars, El refuses to quit and continues on his political tirade; criticizing ICE’s detainment center practices and the “pseudo-Christians” who support them, with a bar that now lives in my head:

Pseudo-Christians, y’all indifferent, kids in prison ain’t a sin? Shit
if even one scrap of what Jesus taught connected you’d feel different
what a disingenuous way to piss away existence, I don’t get it
I’d say you lost your goddamn minds if y’all possessed one to begin with

The combination of two of the best verses spit by any rapper(s) this year and production help from El-P and long time RTJ collaborator Little Shalimar, create a bouncy, aggressive, deeply truthful banger. “walking in the snow” not only encapsulates the crux of 2020 with lyrics that will become more powerful as they age, but will also forever be associated with the Black Lives Matter movement and the determination to expose continuing racial and societal injustices.
The sonic palette of RTJ4 holds an extremely unique place in El-P’s discography. Jamie is the definition of a self-made 90’s hip-hop legend. This is the dude who put New York underground hip-hop on the map with Company Flow, and he did it with his unique flavor of dark, noisy, dense, boom-bap. Whether he was doing it with the help of Rawkus, or completely independently during his Definitive Jux run, El-P has never made music with the intention of becoming famous. Funcrusher Plus, Fantastic Damage,I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, and Cancer 4 Cure are all highly revered as industrial, technical, abrasive, and completely unsuitable for the radio or a party. The fact that three songs on RTJ4 could easily be heard on the radio, at a party, or in a TV series credits scene is frankly, astounding. In a 2002 interview/documentary on El-P’s budding record label Def Jux, he stated that his friend bet him $500 that he could not make a beat that was “happy”. At the time of the interview, El-P said that he had not won that bet yet. While I might not qualify the beats on RTJ4 as “happy”, if you showed El-P the beat for “JU$T” in 2002, I believe he might have won that bet.
Pharell opens “JU$T” with the pre-chorus, spitting varied examples of how we’re all slaves to our current system throughout the track, over echoing snares and bouncy 808s before bright synth chords and up-tempo hi-hats burst in while Killer Mike delivers the chorus, pointing to the fact that the majority of the people featured on American currency owned slaves at one point in their lives. Mike’s verse touches on the fact that he has committed crimes to get where they are today. Mike is publicly open about his past as a drug dealer. So why is he a criminal, but Benjamin Franklin isn’t? These are the people who built our country, and they built it on the backs of slaves. He illustrates this theme with a more recent examples:

You believe corporations runnin marijuana? Ooh (how that happen?)
and your country gettin ran by a casino owner (ooh)
pedophiles sponsor all these fuckin’ racist bastards (they do)

When corporations are able to sell cannabis legally, but the government continually incarcerates people who trap, our president is a notoriously fraudulent businessman, and the people who helped put him in power run a pedophile ring, yet none of them face consequences and are allowed to continue to profit and remain in power while people suffer; well, we might be closer to slaves than previously imagined.
Rage Against The Machine frontman Zach de la Rocha also makes his mandatory feature appearance at the end of “JU$T”. As the only artist to feature on three Run The Jewels albums, Zach is essentially an unofficial member of the group at this point. His fiery verse is spit with the same “Rage” energy that set him apart in the mid-90’s, ending the track questioning his place in a capitalist society as a recipe for his inevitable demise, since his “breath”, or art, as his weapon to express himself is still being exploited for other’s profit.
Continuing with RTJ4’s heavily synthetic sonic palette, “never look back” features wavering synth leads resting above the slow-jams snappy snares and thumping bass, while a haunting voice echoes in the background. This unsettling aura provides additional gravity for Jamie and Mike to continue self-reflecting on defining moments in their childhood, and as well as how far they’ve come from those moments. Mike and El are both self-made men, and while they have a certain fondness for those gritty moments that defined them, moving forward in life is undoubtedly more important.
Skeletal drums reminiscent of a slowly pounding heart opens “pulling the pin”, before rhythmic hi-hats and textured, watery synths fluttering in the upper register resting above a bouncy synth lead, and punchy 808s, burst in. The track digs itself into a slower, marching groove and shows the duo figuratively doing exactly what the title implies. Painting a portrait of a society that has turned on itself, Mike and El are ready to pull the pin and start over.
The duo both detail their despise for the ruling class, pointing out multiple examples of how the elite have designed our society to keep poor people in their class. Simultaneously recognizing their own hypocrisy for profiting in a system that inherently discriminates; Mike reflects on his own success, knowing that living the lifestyle he enjoys is one built on oppression, and expresses the guilt that has caused him. El-P opens with a brutal metaphor for police, implying that they’re the root cause of the “wretched state of danger” our society exists within, and that the only effective corrective action is to numb yourself with drugs. Despite his advice, Jamie knows this is not a permanent solution, but one that causes more self-inflicted wounds.
The final piece of the puzzle that is RTJ4, “a few words for the firing squad” begins to close the album with ever crescending strings, and loud, thunderous drums which never seem to resolve, continuing throughout their verses. While the drums that lead to nowhere can be sonically unpleasant, the unresolved melodies are intentionally representative of their current mindsets. Their verses are reflective and grim, but simultaneously optimistic and envisions a world where tragedy is a less common occurrence.
El is grateful for what he has now but recognizes his entire life has been skewed by traumas, so out of place feels normal for him. He reflects on his current success, noting that the worst people tend to end up with the most, which makes becoming “rich” something not as desirable as it once was.
Mike opens up about the death of his mother who died while he was on an airplane, admitting his struggles to not cope with his trauma with opioids. However, his wife provides him the most important reason to stay clean “but my queen/say she need a king/not another junkie rapper fiend” while a heartbreaking saxophone solo highlights the gravity of his lyrics.
The track ends with what sounds the like wrap-up voiceover to a TV show, a conceptually satisfying ending, as the opening track “yankee and brave (ep.4)” began with El-P stating:

”This week, on Yankee and The Brave”

This voiceover paints the duo as brothers on the run from the law and crooked cops, and while this does close this “episode” out as intended, the critic in me is bothered by the slightly kitschy outro to such a spectacular album. The voices singing over and over, “Brave, brave, braaaaaave, Yankee and the Brave” would be, simply put, better left on the cutting room floor. The ending of this track alone is what knocks my score of this album down a few points. Despite its stellar lyrical content, with drums that never seem to reach that “holy shit!” moment, and the easily skippable outro, it’s upsetting to me that an album this great ends on such a low note.
Overview
RTJ4 is by far my favorite album of the year. El-P’s cutting edge approach to their sound, blended with lyrical content that continues to be more relevant by the day, the duo have come together with what is objectively their most accessible album to date. RTJ4 is the natural evolution of sound and subject matter for the duo; taking the foundation set by Run The Jewels 3 and evolving it into a more concise, more accessible, and more conceptual album. While I still personally prefer the “fuck the world” intensity and experimental nature of Run The Jewels 2, RTJ4 opens themselves up to a whole new world of exposure, and when you’re as talented as these two, you know they’re going to capitalize on it. RTJ is currently at their apex, and they’ve created an album that will make many new life-long fans going forward.
9.2/10
Discussion Points

• How does this compare to other RTJ releases? How about in comparison to the member’s solo works?
  
• Does the overwhelmingly positive critical reception of this album surprise you?
  
• How will this be looked back on in 5 years?
  
• What are your favorite lyrics?
  

ALL SPOILERS HAVE BEEN MARKED WITH SPOILER TAGGING TEXT!

Disclaimer

The official confirmation of Kinnikuman’s controversy and how it is relating to the Holy Samba Night’s controversial rumor is still not to be proven at this point. Credit where the credit is due, special thanks to Taiwanese fans for they have decided to investigate the rumor and confirmation. P.S: English is not my first language, I've really tried my best here, so please bear with me. I'll edit if there is any mistake in this post.
Well, it's time to clear up the misunderstanding with the Holy Samba Night (Also known as Quetzmas and Christmas 2018 for the JP audience) because, over the past months, FGO TW fans posted how much evidence they have found during their investigation into the topic. The rumor is getting escalated more and more, ever since the event did not receive a reprint version on the JP server to this very day.
First things first, the rumored statement of “Kinnikuman author will sue anyone who uses their work as a parody reference” is misleading information, that is nothing to do with the actual issue. In fact, there are many popular series, real-life gymnasts, and pro-wrestlers making a shout-out to the series without violating the copyright law and fair use, especially the iconic finisher move “Kinniku Buster” (Muscle Buster in literal translation) gets referenced a lot (Start from left to right: First column: Shimoneta, and Daily Lives of High School Boys. Second column: Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Kill la Kill. Third column: Gintama, and Soul Calibur 6).
Not to mention Yudetamago the creator of Kinnikuman, they don’t mind people using their work for a source inspiration, and the series itself was originally a self-aware parody and a spoof of Ultraman before shifted into a pro-wrestling theme. Because the manga is so popular and its success, it became a major pop-culture phenomenon in Japan and created a franchise that spawned dozens of spin-offs, parodies, cultural references, toys, merchandise, and many more. The chances are at least people will notice a shout-out or an influence in their favourite series, and FGO is one of them.
Now that rumored statement is completely discredited once and for all. With that being said, the true confirmation of Kinnikuman’s controversy will be covered in this post.

What are relevant facts about Kinnikuman and its recent issue?

The original creator of Kinnikuman, Yudetamago is the duo mangaka consisting of Takashi Shimada the story writer, and Yoshinori Nakai the artist. The former has Twitter homepage.
With the exception of one-shots and spin-offs, Kinnikuman (1979) was supposedly reached its conclusion in March 1987 and the final 36th volume was published on 15 April 1988. After 24 years, the manga finally gets a revival continuation that has returned on 28 Nov 2011.
The continuation of the 1979 version is published in Shueisha’s Shu Play News and it still ongoing. As of 4 January 2021, 73 volumes were released, including all old 36 volumes were published in the reprint edition with censoring specific copyright cameos.
◈ Since when the issue happened and how it seems to be more considerably controversial?
The controversy has occurred on 1 Sep 2020, when Shimada feels disappointing to see people posting screenshot spoiler of the recent chapters in public outside the official web-page lately. He pleading to the fanbase for do not to post it publicly due of the newest chapters have contained heavy spoilers and the nature of the plot-driven.
On 10 Sep 2020, Shueisha made a public announcement by requesting for fans who are using images to be posted on social media that might be leading to potential business damage. The next day, Livedoor NEWS reported that Yudetamago has finally taken a first legal action for spoilers on the internet. Thus, Shueisha announced their new copyright policy that threatening people posting unauthorized contents.
On 14 Sep 2020, J-Cast has posted the interview with Furukawa Kensuke the e-commerce businessman, and Kobayashi Kota the cosplayer, gymnast, lawyer, and also who is a big fan of the franchise (Most JP fans recognize him for being one of the most popular Fate’s Ozymandias cosplayers). They are asking what are their opinion on Kinnikuman’s controversial topic, what are merits and demerits of posting screenshot spoilers, and the definition of true spoiler.
Jay Allen from UNSEEN JAPAN was the only publisher who had covered the full-story article in English, it got posted on 13 Sep 2020 but didn’t get enough attention among English-speaking audience. Here’s the tweet link to those who want to spread the awareness. Also, the specific paragraph from the same article:

On the NTV morning program Sukkiri!, legal expert Kokuchi Yoshio said the company could argue that releasing spoilers amounts to obstruction of business and seek damages from overzealous fans.

(SPOILER ALERT FOR KINNIKUMAN FANS BECAUSE OF SCREENSHOT SPOILERS). Once again, thanks to Taiwanese fans for posting another confirmation that is related to the paragraph. The article is written in Chinese but it has the same context as UNSEEN JAPAN’s article, it’s worth mentioning that there are images showing the fact Sukkiri has covered the news.

Why Kinnikuman’s issue happens to be connecting to Christmas 2018 (JP), The Holy Samba Night?

The controversial rumor of Kinnikuman against Holy Samba Night doesn’t end here, despite the rumored statement as mentioned in the Disclaimer section is confirmed to be false.
Here’s the brief information about Holy Samba Night: The event being a pro-wrestling theme mixes with a Christmas theme, which is at first, a refreshing concept. Quetz Samba and Bradamante are main allies, the latter gets focused more than the former due to the title name for the event’s subtitle is named after the latter: Snowing Ruins and the Maiden Knight (In NA server, The Snowy Ruins and the Girl Knight). The most notable thing, it is an obvious parody event with several cultural references, and most of all, the story is heavily based on Kinnikuman (In NA server, another reference like Scott Reiner’s Math Promo was added there but it did not exist in the original text on JP server).

Warning!

There are many sources that contain many heavy spoilers from the manga itself. Even though some of these spoilers are very old, many newcomers insist they don't want to get spoiled, so you have to use spoiler tagging text. Please understand and respect their decision.
MCrona had posted the information of how many Kinnikuman references are found in the event, and luckily for another post didn't get a copyright strike, Quetz Samba’s moveset copies some Kinnikuman characters of their signature moves. According to people who read the manga, there are more unseen references of signature moves she copies including her Noble Phantasm and Jaguar Taiga’s cut-in.
It is true that Shueisha has posted their new copyright policy, there are Twitter posts still survived out there (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6). Why their post hasn't taken down by Shueisha is unknown, they believe there's no way Shueisha able to track every single post and every singe time, which is one of the main demerits of their copyright policy. Although they're already mentioned that some of them have gotten a warning from Shueisha, so they've decided that it's important to pay respect for Yudetamago's wish and readers including newcomer can enjoy their experience.
In the next section is the "Your Mileage May Vary" debate and discussion. I have added the table of a timeline showing the progress with important subjects that they are still debating.

YMMV debate and discussion: The rumor of why Holy Samba Night did not get a reprint.

The table of the timeline for Holy Samba Night's controversial rumor on JP server.

Date	Description	Subjects
4 Feb 2017	From FGO Talk Event, according to GF13 the reporter, Ishikura Masashiro the FGO studio director who was jokingly suggested “Kinnikuman” and “Giant Robo” for the future collaboration (Credits to IILsven for finding the tweet).	The evidence they want Kinnikuman Collaboration has been found.
11 Dec 2018	The first announcement of The Holy Samba Night event until implemented on the next day.	The official information page did not reveal who is the scenario writer of the event.
13 Nov 2019	DW has skipped Holy Samba for the first time, then announced Nightingale’s Christmas Carol right off the bat.	Holy Samba hasn’t received a reprint version without DW’s official statement, reasoning, or hint.
10 Sep 2020	Shueisha posted a public announcement about Kinnikuman’s spoiler screenshot.	Shueisha did not mention FGO or Holy Samba but JP fans were completely aware of FGO fans posting the manga’s screenshots on Twitter too. The rumor has already escalated when Holy Samba didn’t receive a reprint again.
21 Oct 2020	Nightingale’s Christmas Carol has gotten a reprint version but Holy Samba still hasn’t got one yet.	CareerSMN has found the snippet from Twitter about the event is parodying Kinnikuman too much. This is where the rumor has started on the NA side. It doesn’t help that not many people know Kinnikuman’s issue has been officially confirmed on the JP side long ago.
15 Dec 2020	DW has announced another new Christmas event, The Santa Claus Road	Once again, there was no sign of Holy Samba coming back without their official statement.
25 Dec 2020	Hiroe Rei the character designer of Quetzalcoatl, posted the new illustration while commented: “who can't come back this year due to various adult reasons”. Until he had to delete the original tweet then re-uploaded the latest one with a different context.	The deleted tweet becoming major evidence, it’s already spreading the news on different sites. They’re get concerned when this happened for an unknown reason.

There are some NA and JP players already know about Kinnikuman’s issue and already posted their opinion prior to this post. Since there are too many of them, at least three users have summarized the current situation:
■ Trubo from Beast’s Lairs posted their first and second comment, speculating TM/Aniplex/DW didn’t want to deal with the lawsuit and why the event did not receive a rerun.
■ ComunCoutinho guesses DW don’t want FGO players to get sued by Shueisha for tweeting and retweeting the spoilers.
■ TienZhan from Discord covering the post of FGO TW players from all different sites (G-Zone TYPE-MOON, Weibo, NGA, and etc) about their perspective and opinion on the topic. (Note: I have asked him if there is a policy rule of posting a single-panel image. He says the policy didn’t mention it, then theorizes as long as don’t reveal too much spoilery moment, but it’s best to take a pinch of salt at this point).
◈ Why Holy Samba Night gets criticized among FGO fans?
The major difference between Holy Samba Night, multiple shout-outs in FGO itself, and other popular series like Gintama, Lucky Star, and name any series you know, is what are limitations of “Fair Use” and their ability to use copyrighted material without needing to get the permission of the original creator. I recommend reading this article for more details.
If we want to compare Holy Samba Night to another FGO’s parody writing, Dead Heat Summer Race is one of the examples of they’re not abusing Fair Use too much. Dead Heat is basically the version of Steel Ball Run (SBR) from JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure series. If you read the Dead Heat’s story then compare it to SBR, the former has no bearing relation to the latter one’s source material but the obvious reference like Ishtar gives them golden bones. There are summer servants who have different popular references of their animation, like Nobu chants Kamehameha from Dragon Ball while fires Ryu’s Hadouken shapes of his hands from Street Fighter into the unique fireball.
(SPOILER FOR NA PLAYERS) The same goes for Saber Wars chronology, it’s a spoof of Star Wars but the story is completely original-writing that you wouldn’t find any strong similarities between the two of them. There are obvious iconic references such as lightsabers, a robot that looks like R2-D2 and Mothy Python’s Black Knight, Munemori being Darth Vader but wearing traditional Japanese armor, and the list goes on, yet these do not break the limitation of Fair Use. (It’s funny to think that Kinnikuman and Saber Wars share their common for being a spoof then shifts to a serious tone and shapes its own identity).
As anyone who criticizes Holy Samba Night's story, the real problem is the scenario writer was copying too much. They did not realize which one is okay to copy, and which one is not too okay to copy, especially since some of the contents from the manga are qualifying to be a spoiler. Fans who play FGO and also read Kinnikuman might go unnoticed if they have found out the reference turns out to be a big spoiler all along, so they have the right to criticize about it.

Post-mortem (Reactions and speculations).

As anyone guesses, at first, people assuming Holy Samba Night's presentation and story are parodying Kinnikuman too much is why the event did not get a reprint. While that theory is not to be proven right or wrong yet, some saying that blows a hole in the argument when different servers have gotten the event without any issue. Although, some of them have pointed out that there are "safety" practices to bypass copyright infringement like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for the best example. Other than that, there’s this particular anime because of the infamous first episode, that is what would happen if they have posted it publicly without original creator’s permission.
That's not the case after Kinnikuman's issue has been found, and DW still being radio-silence about it. Now people are confusing what is a real problem, and speculating at least they should implement Quetz Samba without the event into the Main Interlude.
(Note: Apparently, TW and JP fans making a good point. If DW implements it into Main Interlude without getting a reprint version first, the higher chances are everyone will get a wrong or negative impression by their management decision. The reason why they’re saying that it is a very common issue for Japanese business culture, they have zero tolerance for unethical business practices most of the time).
The only possible fact about Kinnikuman’s issue is just unauthorized spoiler content of the image or full text, that’s it. Still, that really doesn't help for the event is being heavily criticized by Kinnikuman fans. Hence they have noticed a lot of heavy spoilers get copied from the manga, despite how old those spoilers are. Even though there are small changes, it just lacking originality loses all impact. There’s a limit to how much a writer can copy the copyright material.
After I have discussed with people from Discord, I think the theory of DW has to reschedule their new plan due to the typhoon sounds more plausible than Kinnikuman’s issue (DustyBlind speculating the same theory too). The thing is, it seems that theory gets overshadowed by the evidence of Hiroe Rei’s deleted tweet, leading to… Here we are, and the rest is history.
We still haven’t seen any clue if the event will get a reprint on the NA and different servers. From what I understand, the server of NA and JP are running by DW, while different servers are controlling by different ones Good riddance to Netmarble, so I’m entirely not sure if different servers have a chance to get the reprint version without following JP schedule timeline. I can’t speak for everyone who has low expectations, but here's hoping the JP server will get it first than any different servers. Hopefully, DW needs to explain what’s going on with the event eventually, since people asking too many questions to them but yet we never got an official answer, only time will tell.

I've been lurking around and commenting for awhile. I really don't want to write this down, because I guess I would rather forget that anything happened, but that's not possible... This is a very long story so I will not be offended if no one responds-- I just need to get it out there. But I would like some support or advice if you guys have any. <3
I (22 F) got together with my partner (22 M) when I was 14 and he was 15. I have been with him for 7.5 years. We lost our virginities to one another and had an exciting sex life throughout our teenage years. We always had the relationship that everyone else wanted. I went through all of high school with him as my boyfriend (and that was a type of hell in itself) and even since then we had issues related to his addiction. I was a very insecure teenager, and he did what typical teen boys did, looked at the girls in the hallway, watched suggestive YouTube videos, stared at people in public, etc etc. All of these things were brought up between us and gradually he kept adjusting his behavior to make me more comfortable. He would stop looking when I was around, turn his head during sex scenes, and seemingly he stopped watching things. I didn't know that I was actually arming him with the ability to better hide his addiction from me. This continued all throughout our relationship, but I got more and more confident to where he didn't need to turn his head at sex scenes--I trusted that he only had eyes for me and wouldn't get anything from it. I was so comfortable just prior to the discovery that I showed him the WAP music video!!! And I felt no discomfort!! That's how safe and secure I felt.
So, fast forward to our college years (now) and we finally get an apartment and live together. We have lived together for just over a year and a half now. Once we lived together, things got really bad really fast. It was all happening so fast I didn't have time to catch up or take time to understand. When we moved in together, I guess our sex life lost its novelty. We no longer had to sneak around our parents or find times that my roommate was gone. In the first six months of living together our sex life dwindled down to nothing. I immediately blamed myself and my birth control for giving me low libido (ha, not the problem!). Things were also very vanilla between us despite me wanting to try new things. We had sex less and less, and my needs were being unmet. By New Year's Eve, 6 months later, we had a "friend" come to our party and he was hitting on me. He told me he wanted me so so bad, and was texting me from across the room. I was honestly tempted. I even asked my partner his permission? It's all so crazy in retrospect, and I was also a bit drunk, but I was not used to feeling wanted like that. I was tempted because I finally got some attention and it drove me crazy. Thankfully my partner said no and nothing happened. I honestly wouldn't be able to live with myself if it had.
That event caused us to consider opening up our relationship in January 2020. I started to think about having sex with other people (when sober) because even after that my needs were still not met. We had sex so little I can't even give you an estimate on how often it was. Then, in March, I wanted to start an OnlyFans. I said it was to make some extra money, and asked my partner if it would be okay, and he saw no problem with it. I posted some photos on reddit and got lots of attention, which I loved. I didn't go through with the account, though, and deleted my reddit. All of this is honestly disgusting to me now. But now I know I did it because I wanted and needed sexual attention, and my partner was giving all of that to images online.
Then, in May 2020 I had my first glimpse at discovery. I went to shower and needed something from the room, so I texted my partner. He didn't respond. I called. I asked what he was doing. He said nothing. I asked him to bring something down. He said he had to put his pants on first. I began questioning him so fast he didn't have time to think of a good lie. He said he was changing and sat back down for a bit but left the door locked so no one would come in. Yeah, right. I knew this was wrong, and I knew he was doing something wrong, but I just couldn't accept it. I broke down crying to him as soon as I got upstairs. This haunts me to this day. I asked him if he was watching porn, and his response was "I have no reason to do that. I love you so much and you are all I need. You're beautiful." He knew what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. And that is what he told me as a lie to get me to stop questioning him. It's so messed up.
My parents came that day for a visit, so I had to let it go quickly. I kept bringing it up, but in a partially joking matter, because I guess I just couldn't accept the evidence that was right in front of me. The next DDay wasn't until November 2020. We were gift shopping online for our families earlier that month. He went to pick up groceries, and we swapped phones, and I brought up Etsy to see where my items rank in the search engine. That's when I saw his previously viewed items. There were sexual listings and sexual sticker packs of naked girls. Oh my god I was furious. I calmly brought it up. He denied it. Said it was part of gift shopping for his family. Yeah, right. I looked at this other browsing, more suggestive content on amazon, etc. I told him I know that this is only what I've happened to find. This is what he has accidentally let slip through the cracks. I cried and cried and cried. I would lay in the bed while he was at a 5 hour shift at work and cry the whole time. I had to lie to others about why I was crying. That was also during my finals week at school, and I struggled to even turn in my assignments. Through all of that, he still tried to gaslight me and manipulate me. He would come home from work, depressed. saying "Can we please just let this go? Look at my face. I have so much stress acne. Please" AS IF I WASN'T SUFFERING FROM MORE THAN STUPID ACNE.
I told him to quit. I still trusted him with it. He said he would. No boundaries. I didn't understand the addiction at the time. I had never even heard of it. We didn't know what was happening to us and we didn't know how to help it.
So, November and December was a dark, dark time. I was constantly depressed, and I kept asking if he was doing the right thing. He always said yes. Fast forward to Christmas, of all days, when we had another DDay. We went to our parent's houses, so we were apart at the time, and we were going to sext. We both were really tired, so we decided not to, but I felt insecure, and I said "If I don't send anything I'm afraid you'll go to porn." I'm not sure if he would have or not, but that statement started a huge argument over text. HUGE. It led to him admitting that he had been watching porn through our entire relationship. It was horrible. I was crushed. But I finally had the validation straight from his mouth that I hadn't been crazy this whole time. I could finally accept his use and let it sink in to process. I expressed to him how that made me feel and that there would be consequences of any further use. I told him I should just break up with him now, and that caused him to spiral. He called me and cried to me for 40 minutes, saying how sorry he was, how he didn't want to hurt me, how he wanted to come see me. It had snowed that day, and I didn't want him out so late anyway, so we calmed down and went to bed. We told our parents something came up and cut our trip short and left the next morning.
This part is bad, too. We had a false start to our recovery. The drive back was me screaming and crying. A lot of hurtful and bad things were said by me. I don't take it back. That was my feelings and I am entitled to them. The next four days was us learning about the addiction, spending time together, crying together, trying to put ourselves back together. On December 30th 2020, we had our final discovery. He had to go back to work that day, and that gave me time to do my detective work. I had thought he had been sober since mid-November when I first found the shopping stuff, because he said he was, but of course, I found something that told me otherwise. There was a discrepancy in the "My Activity" and history for his Google account. The night of the argument on Christmas. The one where he called me saying he wanted to hurt himself because he hurt me so bad, promised he would never do it again... right after he told me good night and that he loved me more than anything on this earth, he opened up an incognito tab and PMO. I asked him about it. He denied at first, but I had learned by now. I had learned what a liar he was, and I wouldn't back down. He told me the truth. He did it.
This set me off. Like never before. I yelled, screamed, threatened to leave. That broke him down. Finally, we were at rock bottom. He had a panic attack because I started packing my things.
After this night, we entered real recovery. I didn't leave that night, mostly because I'm not in a situation to. But really, I didn't want to. I think he did it because we were in such a low place that was the only thing he knew to turn to. I made it clear. Crystal fucking clear that he has already violated my trust so bad that I had every right to leave. I wanted to leave. I let him know that we are on thin ice and one slip up means we are separating.
Despite all of this, we are doing amazing. For now. I try to just take it day by day. I've learned a lot, and I'm working on my own recovery. I'm trying to separate myself from his addiction. You all know what it's like. I've got PTSD from betrayal trauma, and sometimes I get flooded with my emotional dysregulation. But I am trying. He has disclosed much more than I ever thought he would. He showed me a secret Tiktok account (which hurt more than the porn) and we deleted it together. He lied to me once after, but he had a horrible physical reaction of anxiety to it. We talked it through and he was still dealing with the residual need to hide things out of fear. After that, I've got what I believe is full honesty.
Since learning more, I do not completely blame him. Until we lived together, we didn't have easy access to sex with one another. It makes sense that he would watch porn when we were physically apart. I mean, I did it too. Every single time I did it I felt guilty, though, and he just felt entitled to it. When we lived together, you would think that it would have gotten better... but I guess that's what addiction does. It puts its claws into people. He would watch while taking our cat out on a walk, and PMO while I would go shower. Its all horrible and so, so disgusting. But I am trying not to shame him. There is science behind why he has gotten addicted. He is educated about it now too, and for once, I finally feel like he is acknowledging how I feel about it, and he is dedicated to stopping for himself, as well.
I am mostly struggling with the constant comparison. I feel unloved, I feel neglected, and I feel not good enough. We've never really had problems with PIED, but he would reject me pretty often. I think we are lucky to be in the position we are in. We are only 22, have only lived together for 1.5 years, so I consider this early intervention. That gives me hope that we can be happy in the future, as long as there is verifiable sobriety.
I have set my boundaries as this: one relapse is an immediate separation, relapsing and lying is game over.
I WILL NOT live my life like this anymore. I have been in constant agony for four months. I have been cheated on (mentally), lied to, and manipulated for seven years. It would really be hard to leave a long term relationship, but my whole life is ahead of me, and I will surely get over it. I refuse to be treated like this any longer. The addiction made him want it, it made him want to hide it, and he didn't fully understand that at the time. We were dumb kids-- I shouldn't have put so much trust into someone. But its time to fucking grow up. He's an adult now. He's educated about his addiction. We have blockers, keyloggers, and passcodes on every device. Everything is in place to help him, and if there is a relapse, it is a clear message that he does not want the help. I can't fully trust him, and I really don't want to anymore. I want to only trust myself.

Apologies for the very very long post about growing up in a cult but I kind just wanted to write it all out.
TL;DR: all religion (but especially cults) are craaaazy. Even if you're a coward it's brave to leave.
All my life I have been a coward. But in the world I grew up in, cowardice was a survival mechanism.
I was born into a fundamentalist non-denominational Christian cult. For 23 years I was indoctrinated to be servile, unquestioningly obedient, and put all authority up on a pedestal. Independence was a sin. Free thinking was a sin. Anything but absolute self-denial and allegiance to the church was a sin.
And if you were deemed a sinner, the leaders of the church could take everything from you.
They could turn your family against you, they could make your friends reject you, they could strip you of your home, your education, your opportunities. They could cast you off into the world where you would have to survive in total isolation with no skills to thrive in an alien environment. There was little the church couldn’t do to destroy you if you went out of line.
So being a coward, avoiding risks, doing what you were told… all that felt necessary. Any crack in your flawless performance of “Perfect Christian” could be dissected and scrutinized. Any uncomfortable question, any unpleasing expression on your face, any unsanctioned fraternizing with outsiders could be used as a cudgel against you.
This brings me to the event that truly shattered my life into pieces, the event that informed me of my cowardice, that it was a flaw deeply imbedded in my soul.
The event was my best friend’s departure from the church and how I subsequently betrayed her.
My best friend (let’s call her Kate) and I had been inseparable since we were babies. We had grown up together, spent nearly every day with one another. We were close as sisters (maybe even closer, because sisters often hate each other’s guts but Kate and I never fought, we loved one another unconditionally). For 18 years, Kate was my “person.”
You know what it’s like to have a “person.” You’re in a crowded room feeling lonely and anxious but then you see that person across the room and you suddenly have someone to be with. You aren’t alone anymore. It’s you and them now. You can protect one another from the loneliness, the emptiness, the intense feelings of inadequacy and shame. It’s like being in a class and your teacher assigns partnerships and you look up at that person with perfect confidence not only that they will say yes to you, but that they are looking at you with the same desire.
It’s a synchronicity, an intimate knowing of another’s heart. You can depend on them. Even if everything else turns rotten they will be there for you, that familiar face in the crowd, that person who prefers you over everyone else.
In the world Kate and I grew up in, you couldn’t trust anyone. Everyone was always watching, waiting to report you, waiting to find you wanting. The panopticon was real. At any moment you could be dragged into leadership, accused of sin. It could be something as small as being 10 pounds overweight, or making an off-color joke, or saying a leader had acted with anything but magnanimity and love. If you were dragged into leadership, they would first tear you down mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They would carve you open and tear out all your secrets one by one, exposing you in all your naked inadequacy.
“This is why you are a sinner! You are an embarrassment to God! You are worthless! You are impure! You must repent now and change your entire life or God will turn his face from you and you will be nothing but an evil cancer that will corrupt others.”
They would say all this. They would say you were killing your family members with your sins, that you were leading others astray. They would say you were something dirty and evil and depraved and that they were the only things keeping you from being a horrible depraved monster.
In that world, you were a sinner by association with sinners. If you did not want to be associated with sinners then you must point to the “corrupting influence” and participate in exiling it from the community.
As a result, we all wore masks. At least I did. I was conscious that my every word and action was a performance, a story I was telling to a hypercritical audience constantly scrutinizing me for every imperfection and every fault. Yet I was also intelligent. I had a skill (or “Gift from God” in the parlance of the church). I was a storyteller, a writer. Someone who could shift a perspective with my choice of words, someone who could organize the facts in such a way that I could evade the most obvious traps. I could recontextualize my actions, argue ever so sweetly in favor of my side that I could get at least a little of what I wanted.
There was an aspect of manipulation to it. I was a manipulative person in a certain sense, but it was a manipulative environment. I knew I had a few buttons I could push with my authorities, a few turns of phrase and religious regurgitations of dogma that could give me a bit of room to maneuver. But much of that manipulative aspect of my personality came from being given an impossible standard of perfection to achieve. I learned how to lie quite early on, how to be evasive and twist the truth to protect myself from criticism.
I almost never got in trouble. I knew how to couch my objections in the right non-threatening language, how to disobey without seeming disobedient, how to scrub every aspect of my true personality from view and craft a paper-maché version of myself that would please the jackals hounding my every movement.
In all that time, I think Kate was the only person who truly knew me. She was the only person who I could let my guard down with. I think she felt the same with me, though Kate was less concerned with appearing perfect. Kate had long been her own person and did not have the same desire to appease church leaders. She was quiet and often faded into the background, ignored and less observed than I was.
I was under constant observation.
My mother was a big figure in the church, quite close to leadership. She was scrutinized more heavily by them, and I was scrutinized even more by her. She was a pathological snitch, someone who constantly reported friends and family for their infractions and perceived sins. She was a true believer. Her entire existence was invested in the church and she was obsessive when it came to “shielding me from the perverse influences of the World.” Part of this came from her own immensely traumatic and abusive childhood in which she suffered unimaginable horrors from people she trusted. She was hyper-overprotective and immensely controlling of everything I did. I was a direct extension of her, a doll to be styled and manipulated. Her biggest fear was that I would leave her and that I would leave the church. She monitored everything I did, everyone I was around.
I had so little freedom growing up that she wouldn’t let me style my own hair until I was 19. She picked out my clothes and makeup. She styled my hair every morning. When I questioned her choices or asked to be more independent (even to the minimal extent of wanting to style my own hair), she would react with rage, throwing things and accusing me of not loving her. She would constantly criticize my looks, my weight, my expressions, and my personality in the harshest terms then later fawn over my beauty, intelligence, and talents in the next breath. I was her most prized possession and also the source of constant feelings of inadequacy for her.
During my mother’s rage episodes, I would frequently disassociate, my face becoming blank and stony. I wouldn’t respond to any of the blatant insults and cruelties she’d fling at me, but even my simple non-reaction would trigger her as she’d lash out at me even more. So I learned to paste on an insipid smile and thank her for her “correction” and promise to do better in my practiced Perfect Christian Girl voice. That was the expected response for all children when they were “corrected by authority.” Developing the proper submissive posture and responses was an important part in limiting reactionary punishment. I mastered it young, but even my mother was aware it was inauthentic. I would then be punished for not being “authentically contrite.”
So I learned to be so manipulative and so inauthentic that my Perfect Christian Girl mask was nearly indistinguishable from my real personality, whatever even remained of it. In my mind, I was a pretty mask covering a deep dark abyss. Everything that was once me had been eaten away and corrupted. No love could actually exist. No happiness could actually exist. I was only a performance, not even a very good one because a good permanence was perfection and I was so obviously imperfect.
But Kate… Kate was my tether to reality. She was the only one who I could take off my mask around. The only person I could feel in any way real with. Everyone else, all the other Perfect Christian Girls and Boys, all the leaders and my parents and acquaintances, all they got was this sanitized, synthetic mask. They only loved the mask.
Kate was they only person who loved me, the shattered remnants of the girl beneath the mask. And I loved her, at least as much as I was able. But Kate was always stronger than me… or perhaps being neglected gave her more room to grow. She had not been tied so strongly to the church. She had outside friends and outside ambitions. She had never been a True Believer and her leaving was an inevitability, one I long saw coming.
We both knew that we didn’t believe. We both knew the church made no sense. But I was so hollowed out, so crushed by my upbringing that I could not imagine escape for myself. For me, committing suicide seemed easier than leaving the church. I saw no life for myself on the Outside. I could not survive there. I had adapted to the sour soil of the church and any other environment would be impossible.
We were 18 when Kate told me she was leaving. It was after a particularly insidious message in which the pastor said giving women the right to vote was a mistake and wives should stay with husbands that abuse them. I sat beside her in church that day, my own blood boiling. I watched her fists clench, I watched her face turn to stone. And then… Kate walked out. Just walked out. I felt as if all the air had left my lungs. I had sat through countless sermons like this, sermons that were so evil, cruel, and objectively harmful but it never even occurred to me that you could just walk out. For years I had just disassociated during these sermons, gone into my own fantasy world. But Kate walked away. She walked away and left.
Just like that.
But here’s the thing… You don’t just walk away from the church. You cannot simply leave.
Kate announced her intention to leave, and then found herself dragged into leadership by her parents and told to recant. They uncovered every bit of trauma, every defiance, every deviancy, and every secret. They told her she would lose everything. Her parents would pull their support. She couldn’t go to college. She would be thrown out of her home. They wheedled her with every form of emotional and situational blackmail but Kate stood firm in her conviction that she wanted out and that they had no control over her life. They couldn’t take her out of college. She had already made plans for her living situation. They had no power over her.
Kate was so incredibly brave. She stood up to them, cowed them with her confidence, and walked away. I am still in awe of her courage.
But during that same time, I was also dragged into leadership. Guilt by association. I was a “flight risk,” a young person close to someone who was leaving. I went into that meeting aware of what I could lose. Leadership had full power over my parents. With a word, they could make my parents pull me out of college (where I had a full ride scholarship). They could take away my home, my car, my livelihood, and my future. If I did not appease them I could go from a position of total dependence to a position of complete abandonment. I was technically an adult, but everything about the church cultivated complete dependence on it. I did not have my own bank account. All my money from jobs went directly to my parents. I did not have outside friends (as all outside relationships were highly scrutinized and disdained). If I lost my parents’ support I would be bereft.
I had nowhere to go.
If I made any wrong moves. If I made any wrong expressions. If my loyalty to the church was questioned for even a moment, I could lose everything.
I was scared.
So when they interrogated me about my best friend, her secrets, her reasons for leaving, her past, I answered them. I told them she was just confused and that she didn’t really want to leave the church. I told them that Kate was a good Christian and that she just needed to be reminded how good the church was. I told them we were good Christian girls and that it was just a mistake on Kate’s part.
I was scared. But I was also afraid of loss. I was afraid of losing Kate, of course, but I was also afraid of losing more petty things. For a year I had been saving for a study abroad trip to Italy. It would be my first time being away from my parents, a month away from the church. I was aware that if I was not presumed “solid” in the church, they could force me to cancel that trip. I would lose thousands of dollars that I had scrimped and saved for because I was not deemed “pure enough” to be away from the constant influence of the church.
It feels so petty now. I was afraid of losing a fucking trip. I knew they could take away my education and my home but those fears were more abstract. I could play the good and compliant believer enough not to face those consequences. But I was in real danger of losing that trip. My mother had threatened it. She said I was not “spiritually ready” or “emotionally mature” enough to be gone from home for that long (a month). My mother was itching to take it from me, knowing I would lose thousands of dollars and an opportunity of a lifetime. Kate leaving was only another reason to keep my close.
So I betrayed my best friend for selfish reasons. I was perfectly compliant and non-threatening. I did not defend her or stand up to leadership on her behalf. I gave them whatever information they wanted about Kate’s plans so they could thwart her escape. And then to top it all off I offered to get her to renounce, to come back. Kate would listen to me, I said, she wouldn’t leave if I asked her to stay.
This is such a shameful thing to me now. I reached out to Kate. I asked her to meet with me. Then I begged her to come back to church. I begged her to reconsider. I begged her to recant. I begged her to speak to leadership once more. They’d answer all her “misconceptions” about the church. We were wrong to disbelieve. The church was the only place we could thrive.
I used every bit of our friendship as leverage to get her to stay, to get her to go to leadership one more time. And she did go to leadership one last time. She endured four hours more of interrogation and mental abuse so I would not be blamed for her leaving. Kate told me later that she was worried I would hurt myself if she left, that her fears of what I would do to myself kept her tied to the church far longer.
But she still left. And when she did finally leave, thrown out from her home and shunned by her family and former friends, I too shunned her. On the instruction of leadership I broke off our friendship. I turned my back on her.
Even now I only feel shame for what I did. My cowardice. As I flew to Italy a few weeks later, I became truly aware of what an evil and morally bankrupt thing I had done to someone I had supposedly loved. I had betrayed my friend over a religion I didn’t even believe in. What kind of person does that?
Now of course, I know it wasn’t a real choice. The coercion of leadership, the cult indoctrination, and my own precarious situation and annihilated sense of self made being brave in that instance impossible. But I still regret it all the same. I did a terrible thing to protect a religion I hated and betrayed my dearest friend as a result. Yet I was also under so much more direct pressure to “be good.”
In a sense I think I was regarded as more potentially dangerous if I left. I was closer to the inner circle of leadership. I had an undoubtable talent for articulating my story. If I left, I think leadership feared what I could say about my experience.
They were so afraid of my writing talent that they told my parents I was forbidden from writing anything publicly. I had been praised for my “Gift” for years. I wrote funny and lighthearted posts on a blog that circulated relatively widely in the community. I also wrote stories and essays about things I was interested in and stuff that happened in my life. For years, people came up to me constantly saying that I had touched them with my writing, that I had articulated something they felt deeply, that I helped them through dark times. In my mind, being a writer was intrinsically part of who I was. I never wrote anything that was inappropriate or damning to the church. Usually it was wholesome, heartfelt, and hopeful. But I did sometimes write about my own anxieties and worries. It always ended on a positive note, but even the implication of spiritual struggle or social anxiety was counter to the perfect Christian Girl image I was supposed to uphold at all times.
I also struggled with the constant demand that I turn my writing into explicit propaganda and advertising for the church. I would write about my feelings about turning 18, or traveling abroad for the first time and my mother and then leadership would demand I shoe-in a whole paragraph about how wonderful my cult was. I was deeply uncomfortable writing this propaganda, but I did it anyway because I loved to write and I felt like it was the only time I was allowed to have anything close to authenticity. Yet around the time I turned 18, I published a post about my own struggles with perfectionism and questions about the nature of God. I ended the post affirming that I just needed to trust God and try to be kind to others, and that all my questions and anxieties would subside in time.
This was too much for the church. When a leader read my post, she said it sounded like a “cry for help.” I got dragged into leadership and they dissected my writing. they said is displayed a disgusting lack of faith and that it was simply “self-centered masturbation that did not glorify God and only glorified me.” They said no good Christian would be so selfish as to desire the spotlight on her rather than the church. I was then forbidden from writing publicly any more and told I needed to take down my entire blog. If I wanted to write publicly, I was only allowed to write for the church newsletter, and even then I needed to be anonymous and fit into the strict style of pablum that newsletter was written in.
This broke me. I was a writer. I had been told by countless teachers, friends, classmates, and strangers that my writing was something. That it touched them. That is said what they were unable to say. That they saw the world in a different light after reading what I wrote. I was told that God gave me this gift and that if I didn’t write I was wasting my God-given talent. Then to be told that my one talent, my one gift was “self-centered masturbation” that only glorified myself… Well that was devastating. When I say the church hollowed me out, I mean it. That year I turned 18 was the year I first began cutting myself, the year I first began to seriously contemplate suicide.
I had long struggled with depression. The church had impossible standards for beauty. Even being ten pounds overweight was considered to be a “billboard for sin.” I struggled with an eating disorder throughout my childhood and adolescence. I was valued first and foremost for my beauty, and if I wasn’t supermodel gorgeous I was considered to be worthless by the church.
But after losing my writing, I fell deep into myself. My anxiety increased tenfold. I was struggling with the deep existential crisis of my own disbelief in the church and my own sense of hopelessness that I would never be happy. I believed I was worthless, that I was the most disgusting, evil, ungrateful sinner who had ever existed and I brought only evil into the world.
Then I lost Kate. I didn’t just lose her though. I betrayed her. I shunned her. We didn’t speak for years after she left. In that time I became deeply suicidal. I had several suicide “attempts” between the ages of 18 and 22. I cut and burned myself. I starved myself. When I would drive home from school I would consider driving into pylons. When I was near the edge of a bridge of building, I would seriously consider jumping off. Death was on my mind constantly, even as I smiled sweetly for photos, even as I testified my rote dogma at church services.
It also did not help that during this time I was being aggressively “courted” by the son of a leader. I was 18 when he became interested in me. He was 26. I didn’t have any choice when it came to dating him. Our pastor had said as much. Girls in the church had no right to refuse the affections of a godly man. If God had put you on a man’s heart, then petty things like attraction, affection, and compatibility did not matter. If your parents had arranged a match then you needed to submit to it regardless of your own feelings.
I knew I did not love my suitor, but my lack of love for him made me feel worse. He was misguided, even more indoctrinated than me. He did not mean to, but he constantly belittled me; my appearance, my intelligence, my worth. It was clear that he felt entitled to me, to an obedient Christian wife. In fact, one of the main things he said he liked about me was that I was “younger and more submissive” than girls he had courted in the past who ended up rejecting him.
In the church, marriage was a must. It was the center of everything. Weddings were church-wide affairs. So was matchmaking, a special hobby of the pastor. People (but especially girls) who were single too long were viewed with suspicion and pity. I was about 20 by the time things really heated up, and even then I was regarded as an old maid by church standards. Most girls in my cohort were married or engaged before they turned 20 and had multiple children before they were 25. I was told by leadership that if I rejected my suitor, I was rejecting my only chance at love and marriage. They said I was “spitting in the face of God” if I said no to him. My suitor did want to marry me, but I knew deep down that it would be a terrible mistake. I would be tied to the church. Even someone who was not a true believer would stay if they risked losing a spouse or their children by leaving. The church was very good at winning custody battles on the behalf of members against non-members. I knew that if I tied myself any further to the church, I would be unable to leave.
So I told my suitor no. I said that while I respected and admired him, I did not feel capable of giving him the kind of love he deserved and that I could not, in good conscience, pretend to have feelings for him that I did not truly have. I was very careful to be kind and respectful in this refusal, but even then he lashed out at me. He said I was a cruel and selfish girl who would end up alone. He then told leadership about my mental health issues that I had confided to him as reasons why I felt I could not be in a relationship, including a suicide attempt I had a few months prior.
I was once again dragged before leadership and they interrogated me about my depression and suicidality. I had confessed the suicide attempt to my parents shortly after it happened, and begged them to let me get medical attention and see a professional. They were more horrified by the suggestion that I see a counselor than they were about my suicide attempt. When this was brought before leadership, they said my sins were the cause of my depression and laid hands on me to “pray away all the demons” that possessed me. Leadership also said that the “cure” for my depression was dating a godly man and they encouraged my suitor to basically stalk me for a year and a half.
All this was extremely traumatic and I once more just collapsed into myself. I had constant panic attacks and nervous episodes that I had to hide from my parents and other church members. I can’t count the times I silently wept in church bathrooms as I had panic attacks. I threw myself into school (specifically starting law school) because I saw it as my only way out of the church besides death. When my first semester of law school ended in mediocre (but passing) grades that lost me my scholarship and would put me in crippling debt, I had a severe suicidal nervous breakdown.
During that breakdown, I confessed my disbelief. After going through my initial comprehensive plan to kill myself after coming home from Christmas at my grandparents, I made slightly less destructive plans to run away and leave everything behind. My father, in a rare moment of understanding, told me to just stay in school and not throw everything away. I stayed in school and stayed nominally in church, but I began a program of serious and comprehensive self-transformation. I finally acknowledged my complete disbelief in the church, resolving the serious cognitive dissonance that had been tearing my mind apart for years. I decided that I would stay in church for two more years, graduate law school, become independent, and leave everything behind to start a new life. I became extremely self-disciplined, exercising, reading 50 pages a day for self-edification, and journaling at least 4 pages.
In 2019, the year I turned 22, I read 80 books (mostly on forbidden knowledge like philosophy, biology, and history), I wrote a thousand pages of journal entries, and I got into the best shape of my life. I excelled in school and began making outside connections. I reconnected with Kate on a shallow level at first but then reconciled with her on a deeper level as we finally spoke about what happened to us. I also began secretly seeing a trauma psychotherapist, paying her in cash for secret therapy sessions.
My plans to leave church after I graduated were derailed by Covid… or perhaps escalated is the better word. When the lockdowns happened, I was finally free from church for a whole span of time. It is crazy to think about it, but I was probably at church or doing church things at least thirty hours a week, four days a week. When the pandemic hit I finally had a moment away from the constant magnetic pull of the cult.
And I realized I did not need it. I could survive without it. I was happy without it.
In the summer of 2020, when my cult was defying gathering restrictions to worship maskless and un-socially distanced, I stayed home. And then, without much fanfare…. I left.
Just like that. I left. I refused to meet with leaders. I refused to be dragged in. My mother threatened to throw me out on the street and I said she’s have to make me leave because I was not going to budge an inch for her. I was not afraid. Not of her. Not of the church. Not of anything. How could I be afraid? They had no power over me anymore.
I was ready to turn my back on my parents if they pushed me to it. Regardless of the consequences I was done, even if that meant losing my home.
Luckily, my father intervened and said that as long as I stayed in school and did not talk openly about the church, I could live with them rent-free. This was definitely a boon in a pandemic when paid internships were impossible to find and my education was all consuming. In the end, my leaving was anti-climactic, surprisingly so.
I think the church was bleeding members during the pandemic, so they had less resources to cow an older 20-something into staying. I was one of many who left that year. Not so brave as those who had to fight their way out in the Before Times. But I did get out. I got out and felt the weight of decades of shame, decades of indoctrination slip off my shoulders.
I had been a coward so long. I had been a coward when those I loved needed me most. I had been terrified of the outside world for so long and the horrible consequences of leaving I expected. What I did not expect was the relief.
I did not feel brave. I have never felt brave. I certainly wasn’t as brave as Kate. I was careful, pragmatic, quiet. I was terrified of leaving. When I did it was less of a plan and more of a snapping. But I left all the same and I am proud I left.
I am out in the Real World now. The cult is still at the edges of my life but its power diminishes with each day. I am free in my soul. I feel little shame now, little self-hatred. I feel happy. Content just to breathe the air without the oppressive boot of the church on my neck.
I am still scarred by the cult. The cult robbed most of my youth, the pandemic had robbed my of the rest. But I am nearly 24 now. In six months I will hopefully have my JD. I have outside friends and I’ve reconnected with ex-members who were once lost to me. In our own way we take care of one another.
Kate and I are friends again, though the years and betrayal have made our friendship less intense and desperate. It will never be what it once was, when she was my tether to reality, but that is okay. It is not fair to make someone else your tether. Part of growing up is accepting loss, accepting mistakes and regrets. I can’t turn back time and go back to what was, but I can choose kindness every day. I can chose to truthful. I can choose to stand up for what I believe in.
I am not a brave person. For much of my life I have been a coward. But at a certain point you have to choose to live and I chose life. I chose to do the terrible thing and be brave and accept my own disbelief. That is something I can be proud of.

Ever since grade three, my friends and I could make Derek Zimmer believe anything. Anything. From Pop-Rocks and Coke make your stomach explode; to earwigs actually burrow in your ears (and one’s on your shoulder right now!); to the typical urban legend of the babysitter and the killer upstairs – and that it actually happened to someone in our neighbourhood.
The best prank we pulled on Derek had to be in grade 6, when we told him that everyone had to go into the girl’s bathroom to change because a toilet had overflowed in the boy’s. This was during gym class too and in our school the bathrooms doubled as change rooms. Geez, he didn’t even question it – didn’t even wait to see us go in first. We followed right behind him while he carried his spare set of clothes with a towel over his shoulder. We didn’t even need to shove him in; he just walked through the door and we locked it behind him and from then on there was nothing but hollering and shrieking from the other side. I got to admit, I still get tickled thinking about it.
After grade seven it stopped being funny – pulling fast ones on him all the time. But, like a bad habit, we kept feeding him lies and watching him fall for them over and over again.
I guess it didn’t help that he had sheltering, hovercraft parents. I mean, the guy believed in Santa Clause until he was thirteen, for Christ’s sake! And they kept walking him to school even though he lived literally just up the street. It wasn’t until Derek begged them, after being tortured by our sneers and jeers, that they finally stopped.
You’d think that they’d have tried to protect him by teaching him not to believe everything he was told. But I guess since they did everything for him, he just always needed someone else to make up his mind.
I don’t want you to get the impression that Derek was slow or something. He was actually a pretty bright kid. He wasn’t top of the class or nothing – and his math and science marks were pathetically low. But, if you spent time with him, you’d see he was actually very insightful, especially when it came to abstract stuff like morality and friendship and artsy stuff too. Oh yes, I was friends with Derek, even though I constantly tricked and made fun of him. Yeah…I was one of those friends. He would actually analyze our favourite TV shows, comparing the ones he liked and the ones he didn’t and go into really meticulous detail about why some were good, and some were bad. What made a joke funny and what didn’t.
At the time, even though I liked talking with him, I kind of thought that all this information was pretty useless – I mean, I just watched shows, movies and played video games for fun, not to write a goddamn dissertation. If Derek had any brains, I thought, he’d put more of his energy into his schoolwork. But now, looking back, it makes me wish our school had a Philosophy class or even an Arts program. I think he would have excelled, rather than constantly being stuck getting C’s and D’s. But we grew up in a small, frozen town in northern Ontario that only offered the bare necessities for a diploma. And in a town where most people work in the mines and spend their spare time ice-fishing and playing hockey, Derek stuck out like a sore thumb.
All the teachers seemed to like him, but you could tell they were pretty frustrated by how difficult he found the material. He was also a bit stubborn at times. For instance, you’d think he would have done well in English, right? Wrong. He shined only in the creative writing assignments but didn’t follow instructions and would never read the books that were assigned. The funny thing was, he was a voracious reader, always reading something. He just didn’t want to be bothered reading Lord of the Flies or Of Mice and Men. He just thought they were a waste of his time.
One thing that Derek excelled at, besides being a very loyal – to a fault – friend, was he was an amazing storyteller. When he got hold of an urban legend, or a dirty joke, or if something happened to him, he would tell it in such a way that we would hang on every word he said. There was no rambling, no “um’s” or “uh’s” – he always took his time and told the story perfectly. The punchline or the ending of his story was always clear and left us howling with laughter, terrified, or desperate to hear more.
More than a few of the stories Derek told us were uncannily frightening – tales of ghosts and creatures in our own hometown. Most of them I could trace back to some origin – usually Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. But there were also a few I had never heard of and could not find a source for. Whenever I confronted him with this, he would give me this knowing smile, his light eyes at ease, and say, “There are somethings that can’t be explained.” He would then pontificate about the other world and how everyone was able to access it if they just suspended their prejudices and disbelief. That was how he got “beamed” his stories. At the time, I thought it was bullshit. This was the only thing I had ever known Derek to lie about. Now looking back, I wish I had realized that this honest, gullible boy was incapable of telling falsehoods. And that what he was telling me was something he at least believed to be true.
Eventually, I got a bit jealous of Derek; I never had a good memory for details – aside from numbers and figures – and often when I told a joke, I’d forget an important part of the set-up and the punchline would fall flat. Or if I told an anecdote about something that happened to me that I thought was funny or exciting, after I’d finish, the listeners would just stare blankly, their vacant faces tacitly screaming, “That’s it?”
(Believe me, it took me a long time and a lot of effort to write this story as well as I have).
I was also jealous of Derek because of the attention he got from girls. Although he wasn’t very athletic, he was tall, fit and good-looking. And his gullible nature, I think, made a lot of them think he was cute. You know, like a lost puppy you just want to take care of. Unfortunately for them, Derek was too absorbed in his own world of Marvel comic books, Stephen King, Family Guy, and Doctor Who to ever take a hint.
This got really interesting in grade ten when Christie Blackwell, a preppy girl from the states, came to our town. Her family was from North Dakota and her father had come here for some administrative job at the local mining company. We didn’t know it at the time, but his position and his family’s move were only temporary.
Now, we had likely nothing in common with this girl, but both Derek and I were absolutely smitten. When you’re in a small town all the kids date each other’s sisters and exes, so I guess everyone was pretty intrigued by this new, pretty face from somewhere exotic – like North Dakota.
For a few weeks, she was all Derek and I could talk about. Some of our other friends thought she was cute too, but Derek and I were head-over-heels. I, however, never got up the courage to speak with her. I might have been top of my class and on the lacrosse team but, I knew what I was in the eyes of girls – a short, fat, sarcastic little boy with a sour disposition. Derek, however, he didn’t have the same cowardice I had. He actually went up to her during lunch break and talked with her!
I watched him approach, grinning from ear to ear, waiting for the humiliation and the peal of shrieking laughter from the other girls. But – she actually talked with him. She was positively radiant when he introduced himself and – I thought I was going to have a heart-attack when – she invited him to sit down at her table.
I admit, I was enraged. It wasn’t fair. It just. Wasn’t. Fair. For some idiot like Derek, with no prospects for the future, to have that girl. And what would that mean for me? Why would he want to hang around some loser when he had that girl on his arm?
Luckily, Derek – as I’ve said – didn’t take hints easily, so it wasn’t until a rumor had started about her liking him that he finally was ready to ask her out.
Of course, he told me first.
“Jimmy!” he shouted over the phone one night. I remember I actually winced from the receiver. “Guess what?” his voice blared at arm’s length. After placing the phone back to my ear, I asked him, and he told me that he had heard it from one of the girls that Christie liked him.
I felt a stone form in the pit of my stomach. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that I wouldn’t have gotten Christie. I just thought neither of us would. So, the fact that he got her, and I hadn’t, really burned my ass.
But then, I got an idea. An idea that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Derek,” I said into the phone. “She doesn’t actually like you. I overheard her and Jennifer (the girl who told him). They’re just playing a trick on you.”
There was silence on the other end.
Derek mumbled out a pitiful “But…” and I knew I had to pounce.
“Listen,” I implored, “if you ask Christie out on a date, everyone will just laugh at you. They’re just doing this to make a fool out of you in front of everyone.”
Again, silence fell on the other end. I could then visualize Derek with his head hanging down, all mopey like he sometimes got.
Then, I took it a bit further. Over the line.
“I mean, c’mon, think about it. You and her? She’s only been in our school three weeks and she’s already top of the class. Everyone turns their head to see her. How are you going to be good enough for that?”
I felt that stone in the pit of my stomach again, but this time for a different reason, after hearing Derek sadly mumble, “You’re right…”
Shamelessly, I changed the subject, asking him if we were going to still hang out this weekend to play X-box at his house but, his voice never came back to normal.
That night, I barely slept. I really felt like shit.
This was the first trick I pulled on Derek that made me feel that way. But it wouldn’t be the last.
It was grade eleven, when Lloyd (our other friend) and I took the pranks too far.
Lloyd and I had just gotten back our exam results for grade 11 Physics and, while we didn’t fail, these marks weren’t going to look good on a university application either. Plus, it was December, so there wasn’t much time left in the semester to make up for it. Of course, ole Derek wasn’t in Physics. Or Chemistry. Or Biology. He found some loophole in a technicality to take something called “Earth and Space Science” in grade 12 for his science/technology credit (don’t ask me how the Ontario education system works).
Also, around this time, Derek was getting super-obsessed with comic books and writing his own (report cards and postsecondary prospects be damned). At the time we thought it was really funny. He didn’t just draw the six boxes with stick-figures in ‘em and the poorly graphed word bubbles like most kids; he actually found out the proper format to write a comic book script. He kept trying to make us read them but – I mean – we didn’t know how. Plus, we were busy. You know, with school?
Anyway, Derek had this long bastard of a comic book script freshly printed from the school library – an adaptation of some classic horror story by Poe or Lovecraft, I think – and he ran up to Lloyd and me in the cafeteria all smiling, waving it at us, begging us to read it. And, remember, this was the same day we got our abysmal test scores back.
Now, despite our understandably pissy mood, both Lloyd and I resisted the urge to tear Derek’s head off. Lloyd said feebly, “Sure, Derek. Give it here. I’ll read it tonight.”
Derek almost leapt off the table bench, he was so excited. He thanked us and then was off to God knows where.
I turned my head and glowered at Lloyd.
“Are you serious?” I asked him. “You realize we have presentation for Chemistry to finish tonight, right?”
Lloyd blew out the side of his mouth.
“I’m not gonna read it, dude,” he said, his eyes cast woefully down on the crumb and grease laden tabletop. “I’m just pranking him,” he concluded, quarter-heartedly.
I sat there and stared at it for a few seconds. Then, another mendacious scheme started spinning in my head.
I knew that my Uncle Eric was coming over for supper that weekend. I told Lloyd that we would both tell Derek that my uncle worked for Marvel Comics and that he had read his script and loved it. And that he was interested in adapting it and giving Derek a job writing for Stan Lee. I’d invite Derek over to speak with him to discuss this “job prospect” at greater length. The funny thing was, my Uncle Eric was a belligerent drunk who’d mostly been unemployed between his time as a trucker and his time as a garbageman. But never – it probably doesn’t need to be said – did he ever work for Marvel Comics.
Lloyd and I both grinned and giggled like evil children. It was perfect. This way, we wouldn’t have to be drilled by Derek’s questions about what our favourite part was; he would be too preoccupied by the idea of having his work actually published. Working for Marvel Comics for Christ’s sake! An early Christmas present for our naïve young friend.
…I guess you can probably figure out what happened next. I’ll try to spare you the cringe-worthy details.
The next morning, Lloyd and I told Derek about my uncle and fed him our line. Derek beamed like I’d never seen before and bought it hook-line-and-sinker. Of course. That Sunday, he came over for dinner, all excited. Of course. My Uncle Eric was two-sheets to the wind, six gin-and-tonics deep and on his seventh that night. Of course. And when Derek approached him, asking about his script and what it’s like to work for Marvel, my Uncle Eric harshly barked what in the hell he was blathering about. Of course.
I promised Lloyd I would give him all the details on Monday. But seeing Derek, hunched over and defeated, like some withered daffodil – I just, had to look away. I didn’t laugh. Didn’t chuckle. Didn’t even smirk. All I could do was look away, that pit in my stomach turning to stone.
On Monday, in front of the school entrance, about thirty minutes before first bell and thirty degrees below zero, Derek stormed right up to me. Indifferent, seeing this coming and finding no despair, surprise or pleasure in it, I stood where I was, ready for him to hammer me.
Instead, there were no threats, no curses, no accusations. Just one question: did I lie about Christie Blackwell too?
Despite being exhausted from the endless stream of assignments and last night’s interminable guilt, I somehow managed the strength to slowly shake my head and mutter no. One last prank on Derek.
With that, Derek said nothing. And simply walked away.
At that moment, standing there alone with sticky icicles running down my upper lip from my nose to my scarf, I thought I was going to throw up.
The next day, I advised Lloyd we give Derek some distance at lunch hour. I suspected we were personae non grata.
But, to my surprise, Derek came over to our table. Stone-faced, without a word he sat down and ate. Lloyd and I glanced over at him then at each other. The three of us just sat and chewed in silence.
Then, after finishing his serving of oily cafeteria French fries, he told us one of his typically great, terrifying stories. His last.
“You guys ever hear about Melvin Sinclair?” he began, cryptically.
Fake-sounding name. Still, a pretty good start.
Lloyd and I both shook our heads, wordlessly.
“He was a student at our school. Way back, when it was run by the nuns.”
I later found out this part of his story was true. Our high school – Pendleton College – was once run by the local nunnery – but this was when it was still a residential school, with only abused, shipped-in Native kids as its student body.
“He’s actually the person I am going to write my next comic script on. I know you two won’t read it, but I think you should hear about him anyway.
“Sinclair was a funny kid. A bit stupid, you know? Believed anything his pals told him.”
This, of course, immediately rang a bell for both of us. Lloyd and I looked at each other knowingly. Still, we were hooked. At least, I was.
“He was also very poor with a sick father at home who couldn’t work. So, a lot of his friends could make him do things with the promise of money.
“So, one night, around this time of year – just before Christmas, all those years ago, Sinclair and his buddies went out onto Saul Laskin Lake. It was frozen solid then, just like it is right now. Sinclair got dared by his buddies to walk out onto the lake – see if he could make it to the other side.
“Now, Sinclair was afraid. Terrified, you know? Saul Laskin is two football fields long and three fields wide. Sure, he knew it had been frozen solid for three months straight and a jackhammer couldn’t make a dent an inch deep in it. But still, he was unsure. He never walked across ice in the middle of winter before. Never even put on a pair of skates.
“To his buddies, he shook his head, no. He didn’t care if it made him a chicken. He wasn’t going out there, risking falling through.
“So, his friends decided to sweeten the deal. They told him that if he made it to the other side, they’d meet him there, after walking along the shoreline, and pay him three-hundred dollars.
“Now, his buddies didn’t have three-hundred dollars, but they did have a thick wad of ten two-dollar bills. So, they slipped one into Sinclair ’s hand, as proof there was more where that’d come from. They both figured it would be worth it to see Sinclair fall through the ice or wet himself from fear.
“Again, Sinclair wasn’t too bright. He was also very poor, and his family was way behind on the electric bill, which was bad since this was one of the worst winters in Canadian history. Not to mention, Christmas was right around the corner. So, he took the two dollars as proof they had two-hundred-and-ninety-eight more and made his way across the ice.
“The two of his friends giggled behind their frozen-snot-covered mittens, egging him on, telling him he was doing great. Sinclair didn’t clue in though. He just kept going, waddling and swaying from side to side like a tight rope walker, terrified the rhino-hide-thick ice would give.
“Now, his two buddies didn’t want Sinclair to get hurt. Not seriously anyway. At worst, they were waiting for him to slip and fall on his ass, so they could laugh at him until their bellies were sore.
“So, Sinclair got sixty feet across the ice when his buddies at the shore heard a sudden crunch. A sharp, unmistakable sound. The ice had cracked. Saul Laskin was giving under Sinclair ’s weight. Apparently, the lake wasn’t so titanium at the middle.
“Feeling a sudden rush of panic and just a bit of guilt, both of them started hollering at the top of their lungs for Sinclair to get off the ice. To turn back. Sinclair didn’t turn around though. He didn’t even stop walking. He was determined to make it to the other side. To make that three-hundred dollars. Cracks in the ice be damned, his house needed heat!
“His pals on the shore watched in horror when Sinclair took four more steps before plummeting through the ice on the fifth. Unable to think, being dumb kids, they freaked and ran away. It took them ten minutes before they realized they needed to go get help.
“A couple of the teachers and one of the farmers from town came out onto the ice. When they got to the break where Sinclair had fallen in, they made a horrific discovery. On the other side of the hole, was a set of freshly frozen footprints. Like prints in the snow but upside down and inside out. They were glistening and raised, like a trail of swollen scar-tissue. And they headed to the other side – to the end of Saul Laskin Lake.
“On the shoreline, the five of them ran to the other side of the pond, coming to the very end, to find that the steps ended at a second gaping hole in the ice.
“Sinclair ’s body was never found. But the doctors were certain it should have been impossible for him to have walked that length of the ice without succumbing to hypothermia.
“Ever since that night, on the anniversary of Melvin Sinclair ’s arctic plunge, they say he comes back, still drenched and half-frozen stiff, looking for the three-hundred dollars promised him. And taking any unfortunate soul who dares wander across the ice, mistaking them for his two pals who had played that cruel joke on him, so very long ago.”
Lloyd and I stared back at Derek speechless, our mouths agape.
The silence was interrupted when two loud, chortling sophomores bumped into Derek from behind, making their way past him.
“This has got to be bull,” Lloyd insisted, rearing back from the table.
“Where’d you get this?” I asked, my eyes having never left Derek’s face.
“I told you,” he said. “It’s the basis of my next comic script, which you won’t read. There are some things out there that can’t be understood. But you can find them out if you just suspend your disbelief.”
I looked hard at him. He smirked.
“I heard it from one of the teachers and from one of the upper-class men last year,” he confessed. “Both of them told the story exactly as I just did.”
I was then fairly certain what Derek was going to say next. And I was right.
“The anniversary of Melvin Sinclair ’s disappearance is tonight,” he whispered, as though we were sharing state-level secrets. “I say we go to Saul Laskin after dark and check it out.”
Lloyd blew out his mouth, his lips making that pffft sound.
“Yeah, all right,” I said hastily. Almost automatically.
“What?” Lloyd blurted.
“I’ll go,” I continued. “Hell, let’s all go.”
“Great!” said Derek, over Lloyd’s grumbled protest. “Meet you both at the shoreline near Tenth and Mockingbird. Be there at ten, sharp.”
With that, Derek stood from his seat, carrying his meal tray to the metal rack and exiting the caf.
“Dude,” Lloyd spun on me. “What gives?”
“Look, man,” I offered Lloyd, weakly. “We did a really lousy thing to Derek. I think the least we can do is spend one late night with him on this little whim.”
“That’s crap!” snapped Lloyd. “This is your way of playing another prank on him.”
I shook my head vigorously, vexed by his charge. “No way!”
“Yeah? Well maybe this is Derek’s way of getting us back. Playing a prank on us. You ever think of that?”
“I doubt it. Derek’s not like that.”
Lloyd just shook his head, obviously miffed.
We didn’t say anything after that. But we both knew we were going to Saul Laskin Lake that evening to meet Derek.
I remember it was ten below zero. Felt like minus twenty with the wind-chill and even worse that close to the ice. The stars were probably out, and fully visible, but I don’t remember seeing them. I could barely see what was in front of me from my face being two-thirds buried behind my scarph and tuque.
I met Lloyd on the way there, about ten yards from the shoreline on Mockingbird, and he was likewise dressed as a winter mummy. As we got closer, we saw a figure standing upright, unfazed by the cutting gale. It was Derek. He was in his snow-pants and a parka but wasn’t wearing anything to cover his head. Just a pair of earmuffs. Bizarrely, he seemed completely comfortable out there, his flushed red cheeks the only thing betraying how cold he was.
“Well, here we are,” he greeted us, cryptically. A just as cryptic smile on his chapped, purple lips.
“What are we doing out here?” Lloyd growled, rubbing his thickly gloved hands together and bouncing from one foot to the other. “It’s freezing!”
“We’re here to see if Melvin Sinclair ’s ghost shows up,” I told him.
The look he gave me could have thawed Saul Laskin Lake.
“I never said it was a ghost,” said Derek, just over the wind.
The two of us stared at our guide into the other world.
“Then what is it?” I asked.
“A zombie?” Lloyd mocked.
Feigning ignorance, Derek just shrugged.
The three of us stood there, in the middle of December in Canada, staring at the frozen lake like three wallflowers around a dancefloor (an analogy that’s not much of a stretch for us).
Predictably, Derek broke the silence.
“How about we play some Truth or Dare?” he asked. I looked over and saw that cryptic smile on his now bluish lips.
“How about we play some Go-Home-And-Sleep-In-A-House-With-Central-Heating?” Lloyd barked.
Me, I couldn’t help myself.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s play some Truth or Dare.”
“You first,” Derek pounced.
Ordinarily, I would have bickered back and forth with Derek to try to get him to go first, but my recently grown conscience forced me to accept this condition.
“Okay,” I said. I then looked out onto the ice, anticipating what the dare might be and not having any of it. “Truth.”
For the first time that night, Derek’s strange smirk disappeared.
“All right,” he said, his face and voice now very serious. “Yesterday morning,” my mind then immediately raced to that moment, regretting my choice for Truth, “when I asked you about Christie Blackwell,”
“Okay, okay, never mind!” I shouted over him, before he could even get the question out. “I changed my mind. Dare. Give me a dare. What? You want me to walk across the lake? Is that it?”
Without speaking, Derek nodded his head, that cryptic little grin reappearing.
I then looked back at the frozen lake. Derek hadn’t lied when he said that it was two football fields long. In fact, it was longer. 273.5 yards to be exact. From where we were standing, I could see only half of the ice, the other side swallowed up by night and fog.
“Okay, here’s a deal,” I said, trying to negotiate my way out of it. “I’ll go as far as where that fog starts. That’s just before you two won’t be able to see me.”
“No deal,” said Derek, his eyes colder than Saul Laskin. “You go all the way across, or until you see Melvin Sinclair, or you admit you believed my story enough that you’re scared to go out there.”
“What?”
“Or choose Truth.”
“I’m not scared of that boogeyman crap!” I exclaimed.
“Then why not go all the way?” said Derek. “You know that lake is perfectly safe for skating. It’s been frozen solid since October.”
“Because it’s stupid, that’s why.”
“Or because you’re afraid Melvin Sinclair will get you.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Fine. Then choose Truth. Answer my question.”
Astonished, I shot him an incredulous look.
“Man, screw you!” I cried. “You’re the one who’s so stupid that you believe that dumb story. You probably did hear it from an upper-class man last year. They knew you’d be gullible enough to buy it.”
I turned to the frozen pond, my eyes melting the ice.
“I’m going to go as far as that fog starts. From there, I’ll be able to see over to the other side. I’ll also be right in the middle so it will prove two things: One, that no one could fall through the ice when it’s this cold out, and two, that there isn’t some supernatural creature roaming around at night. I’ll prove to you there’s no such thing.”
Derek looked back at me. That strange smile disappeared again from his lips and never came back.
“I’m not gullible,” he insisted in a low voice. “The story is true.”
“Ah, up yours,” I said, walking to the edge of the shoreline and shuffling gingerly onto the ice. “Come on, Lloyd. Let’s go.”
“Me?” I heard from behind.
“Come on, you wimp. Let’s show this moron how stupid and full of it he is.”
The two of us waddled onto Saul Laskin. We inched our way closer and closer to the foggy middle, the thick air never seeming to thin out and recede like it normally would. Truthfully, I could barely see an inch in front of me; the whipping, cold air caused me to tear up and turned my tears to icicles on my lashes. But I was too angry to care. In my mind, I told myself I was going to prove to Derek what an idiot he was. In truth, I just wanted anyway to avoid telling him the truth about Christie Blackwell.
We were well past the center-point when I finally decided to stop. Lloyd was a bit ahead of me. I looked around. The fog was so dense. Even worse, I had to blink my eyes rapidly to break up the frozen moisture that accumulated on my lashes.
I roughly cleared my vision with my gloved thumb. And then I saw it. A hunched figure, just obscured by the fog, hobbling slowly toward Lloyd. Lloyd must have been having the same trouble I was, because he made no effort to run or communicate with the figure, even though it was practically right in his line of sight.
At first, I thought it was Derek. Thought he had somehow caught up and was trying to scare us. But I was wrong. I was very, very wrong.
I tried to warn Lloyd. To shout out. To ask who was there. But I couldn’t. The words were trapped in my throat. I was as petrified as the ice I stood upon. I stared, seeing the nearly naked figure come into focus. It was a man – or…what was once a man. The skin was pale, translucent, all the blue and purple veins visible. The hair was blonde – silver and slicked back, like the head had just been submerged in water. It looked like a cadaver that had escaped from the city morgue. Its bright coloured eyes resembled a pair of round, broken mirrors, and never once did I see them close. Not even blink.
Then, I…I heard it speak!
“I did it…” it muttered, hoarsely, the sound like the ruffling of crumpled paper. “I did it…where is she?”
The creature was mere feet from Lloyd, but he’d turned his back to it like it wasn’t there. He then lifted his head, one red eye open, and asked, “Jimmy? Did you say –”
Before he could finish, the walking cadaver shot a long, bony arm, grasping his shoulder with its claw-like fingers.
Lloyd looked around and shrieked.
“Where is she?” the thing muttered huskily. “Where’s my baby?”
Undoubtedly terrified, Lloyd tried to sprint away, only to slip and fall on the ice. The walking cadaver’s grip remained unbroken, causing Lloyd’s winter coat to rip. The thing pinned him, its grasping claws shaking Lloyd by the lapels.
“You said if I did it, you’d tell me where she was!” it hissed into Lloyd’s face. I watched, still petrified, only able to imagine the look of confusion and terror on Lloyd’s bundled-up face.
“Where is she!” the creature screamed. “Where is she? You promised. You promised\!” \ Its voice cracked on the last syllable.
It then started throwing Lloyd’s torso up and down, until the back of his head hit the ice with a shuddering thud. I cringed. It was like the sound of a bowling ball being dropped straight to the tiled, wooden floor. The thing then mounted him, clawing and punching at his lifeless form in a hungry frenzy. With its cracked, blackened teeth bared, the canines resembled a set of fangs.
I wanted to run. I wanted to help – to fight that thing off of my friend. But I swear, I – I couldn’t.
By the time that thing had stopped, I could see freshly fallen red droplets, steaming on the ice around Lloyd’s head. I knew then that he was gone.
What happened next, I can’t explain. The creature laid down on Lloyd’s supine body, putting its pale, grotesquely scabbed head on his chest, as though listening for a heartbeat. I then realized that the fog was thickening. There were whole plumes of smoke wafting up from the ice beneath their bodies. I realized when they began to sink, that the ice was melting.
The creature sunk down beneath the ice, pulling my friend’s carcass along with it. Once they had slipped out of sight, I heard the worst sound you could possibly imagine. The sound of the ice cracking. I looked at my feet and saw a deep gash, shaped like a lightning bolt, tearing a path through the ice beneath my feet and between my legs. Several mini fractures splintered off, creating a spider-web of icy shards.
My senses returning to me, I ran, falling and stumbling, back to the shoreline. I don’t know how many steps I made before I slid and fell through – and was completely submerged in Saul Laskin.
I don’t remember how cold it was – though it was freezing beyond imagination. I just remember the disgusting feeling of my clothes soaking in the water beside my skin– and the sheer panic blaring inside my skull.
Remember how I was short and fat? Well, I also didn’t have a clue how to swim. I just floated there, under the water, not seeing a damned thing, my mind a riot of horrible scenarios and images.
As you would expect, I flailed in desperate mortal fear when I felt a hand grab at me and pull. Thankfully, the hand was pulling me upward, to safety. And it belonged to Derek.
“Jimmy,” Derek panted, after he’d dragged me up onto the surface. “It’s – it’s okay,” he struggled to say, as he too was drenched from head to toe. “Here’s my – my coat...p-put it on.”
He then laid his open parka over my body. Luckily, he had taken it off before diving in to save me. I’m sure now if it wasn’t for his quick thinking, I’d have died that night.
“L-listen – listen to me,” he stammered on. His lips were turning a deep blue, as was his face. “My phone is in one of the coat pockets, call 9-1-1.”
“W-what?” I said, not understanding why he didn’t do it himself.
“Just do it,” he said, then turned and began walking in the direction of that creature.
“Wait!”
“I’m – I’m going to g-g-go get L-l-l-loyd!” he blurted out. Now, this is where I’d like to tell you that I forced Derek to stay with me. That I told him the truth about Christie Blackwell. That I apologized for the cruel joke I had played on him with Lloyd and my Uncle Eric. And for always taking him and his friendship for granted. But that didn’t happen. Shivering from the cold and my own fear, I just watched as he marched away, disappearing into the fog.
I took out his phone from the right pocket and dialed 9-1-1. I remember hearing the phone ring, the monotonous sound reverberating in my skull. I don’t remember anyone answering.
The last thing I remember is the feeling of my body growing warm. All the pain and fear evaporating with the fog. And then, there was blackness. Blackness save for a kaleidoscope of horrible images playing on loop in my mind.
I woke up in the emergency room.
I was told that the paramedics and fire department were called out. That they’d scanned the ice but never found Derek or Lloyd. I was told that I was lucky to be alive. Even luckier that I didn’t have frostbite and would therefore not have to lose any appendages.
Eventually, they got around to asking me why we were out there and what happened. I told them everything. Every last detail. Of course, they all looked at me like I was crazy. Some of them even thought that I might have gone into shock and asked my parents to have me undergo a CAT scan. I never did though.
During my time in the hospital, three thoughts kept spinning around my brain. One, how grateful I was to Derek Zimmer for saving my life. Two, how amazed I was that his story was actually true. And three, why that creature kept asking for its baby, instead of for money, like in Derek’s story. I found out later that the story Derek had told us that afternoon was one of many legends concerning Saul Laskin Lake and that night. Some were about a man whose daughter had been kidnapped by a gang of thieves; that the man was thrown into the lake, his feet encased in concrete, after he’d paid their ransom. Some were of a mentally disturbed woman who had drowned her baby, thinking it was possessed by the devil. And at least half a dozen more I can’t stomach reciting here.
Perhaps the worst moment after that night was when I got a visit from Missus Calhoun, the principal at Pendleton College. She was in her early seventies, stout, with a tight, silver bob cut and a pair of owlish spectacles on her round, little nose. She sat down at my bedside, wearing her shapeless, riotously patterned muumuu, and asked me what had happened at Saul Laskin. I told her. The same story I had told everyone since waking up in the emergency room. When I was done, she just stared at me, expressionless, before giving out a sharp sigh through her tiny nostrils.
“This is what I think happened, James,” she began, a subtle disdain in her voice. “I think you dared Lloyd Apanowicz and Derek to walk out there on the ice. We all know how you tricked and tortured that poor boy since primary school.
“I think when the ice cracked, and your friends fell in, you panicked and came up with this ludicrous lie to cover your tracks, because you think we’re all as gullible as poor Derek Zimmer. Because you think you’re that smart and the rest of us are that dumb. I think you’re a cruel, immature, sociopathic little boy who’ll end up becoming a cheat and a fraud and spend his adult life in and out of prison.”
From my bed, I stared back at her wide-eyed. It was so surreal. An adult – a teacher – speaking to me in such a way.
“And I don’t care who you tell this to,” she hissed. “Because I’m retiring at the end of this school year. And if I never see another sadistic child like you again, it’ll be too soon.”
When I brought up how I had been rescued, had almost succumb to hypothermia myself, she grunted and said, “I don’t know. You seem all right to me. After all, you didn’t even get frostbite out there, did you? And you’re the only one of those boys who survived.”
She then shook her grey head at me, making a tsk-tsk-tsk noise with her tongue.
“In and out of prison,” she repeated to herself, before rising from her chair and leaving me on my own.
Today, I’m happy to tell you her prognosis was false. I haven’t been in jail at any time in my life and the worst I’ve ever gotten is a speeding ticket. That being said, guilt has followed me around ever since that night.
I never told Derek that I had lied about Christie Blackwell, and for that I am eternally sorry. As I am for making Lloyd come with me across the frozen lake. I had also doubted Derek about his story of the spirit that haunts Saul Laskin once a year on a December night. For that too, I am sorry.
I don’t know what compelled me to play so many tricks on him, besides my overly logical, and cynical nature. But ever since that night, I’m not so quick to dismiss something – even if it does seem fantastic. Or even impossible.

We had to call the cops on The Step Momster last night to start a paper trail, it came pretty out of the blue since she has ignored our existence except to drunkenly call various people to cry victim that we never involved her in my pregnancy and are now “keeping LO from her”.
Well, our decision to not go anywhere or see anyone yesterday apparently threw TSM over the edge because it upset SIL, who supposedly went crying to her mommy we wouldn’t let her see or hold LO. TSM got drunk and called D(ear)H to scream at him. He told her to fuck off and hung up on her.
I called her and told her that if SIL has an issue with OUR parenting decisions that SIL needed to bring it up with us and she (TSM) needed to stay out of it. TSM started screaming at me (after she had answered the phone trying to sound so sweet, saying “Oh hello dear”). She told me that I needed to stay out of it, it’s about her grandson and doesn’t involve me at all.
I lost it at that point. I told her she wasn’t his grandmother, would never be his grandmother, and that we have not wanted her in our lives for years and to leave us alone. She screamed profanities at me and I’ll be honest, I lost my cool and called her some back before hanging up. I’m not proud that I lost my cool, especially since she escalated after that. However, a small part of both DH and I are glad she escalated because she revealed she had been trying to stalk us to force her seeing LO and was gearing up to start coming by our home.
Now, she didn’t immediately reveal this. After I hung up on her she tried calling DH and he ignored it, then she started texting him what can only be described as drunken word vomit. Some of it was incoherent and there was spelling errors all over. I won’t be providing a screen shot of the actual texts as it’s pages and pages and pages, lots of identifying information I’d have to edit and we’ve started a police report with it so I’m not even sure I should share the actual images with anyone at this moment.
She started off calling DH a coward, saying she’s disgusted and appalled by my behavior, that she doesn’t deserve to be treated this way and someone should kick my ass. I told her she was being abusive to us, when I lost my cool on the phone with her, by calling us to scream and call us names, so now she’s saying I’m accusing her of child abuse and said she will force a family meeting of GMIL, FIL, herself and DH to discuss it.
DH’s only reply so far was “not discussing anything with you, get sober and leave us alone”.
Then she went off to say how awful it was that we had a friend give us a sober ride home when we had some alcoholic drinks one night. Yes, she accused of us being horrible for getting a designated driver when we, adults over the age of 21, had alcohol over two years ago. Then she was the victim again and that DH didn’t include her in “the pregnancy”. It was back to calling DH a coward, a piece of shit, and a failure to be a man.
His next response was “this is enough leave me alone”.
Her next barrage of word vomit included how she doesn’t understand why she was told she can’t be LO’s grandmother (used a name that wasn’t even his, not even something that could be a nickname, just some random ass name) and that she is legally allowed to be in his life. She said she “is just going to show up one day, because that’s how (she) is”. I told DH to tell her she is not welcome here, ever and we needed to call the cops.
“You are not welcome to come to our home. We do not want you in our lives, stay away from us and leave us alone.” Was what he sent her to make sure it was very clear we had not invited her over. We called the cops.
As we waited for the cops and while we were talking to the cops she sent the following in her long, mostly incoherent word vomit texts (everything is in the order we received it) Context/reality/truth/our thoughts in parentheses:

1. You are delusional and thinking small. (We think this was in regards to her coming to our home, not sure but it’s definitely a threat)
   
2. I’m all ready looking for you at the stores you shop at. (She’s been planning to or has been trying to stalk us for a while, which is how the cop interpreted this particular text, and included that in his report)
   
3. I WILL be seeing LO before he’s 18. (There are no grandparents rights in our state, plus she’s DH’s stepmother and never adopted him. Even in a state with grandparents rights she would never ever qualify, she can only wait until he’s 18 to try to legally see him).
   
4. You are both horrible parents and need help. (This was part of a long rant about how DH doesn’t know more than Dr. Fauci in regards to the pandemic and our decision to not let anyone see or hold LO at the moment. Thing is we are following guidelines Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the APA put out)
   
5. I am a member of the family, you can’t hide from me. (We laughed at this and joked she’s trying to say she’s in the mafia. We had to laugh about something but we honestly don’t know what she means by “the family” or what “the family” is. If she means DH’s last name family, she’s absolutely wrong and not apart of it at all. GMIL made that abundantly clear when she and FIL separated over nine years ago.)
   
6. DH danced with OP’s mom at the wedding and I was awkwardly told about it. (We think she might have been upset DH didn’t do a motheson dance with her but instead danced with my mom during a slower song, with everyone else on the floor with them! My dad is disabled and was barely able to do the fathedaughter dance with me and didn’t have the energy to dance with my mom.)
   
7. I will force you (DH) to talk about this with me, you have no choice in the matter. (She said over and over how she will force a meeting with GMIL and FIL present to keep him honest and accountable for his actions.)
   
8. I don’t understand why I’m being treated like a bad guy, I haven’t done anything and even if I did you don’t treat family this way. I’m his grandmother and legally allowed to see LO. (She flipped back and forth between threatening grandparents right and then understanding there are none in our state. I mean, her threats on this are empty, she legit doesn’t qualify. Even if we lived in New York she doesn’t qualify).
   
9. Don’t worry, you will pay for this. (The cop seemed a little too excited she sent this, he said he’ll put it in the report and it will help us should she even attempt to show up and/or damage our property anywhere)
   
10. If I decide to come to your house you can’t do anything about it, I’m free to do what I want and talk to who I want. (Okay crazy pants)
    
11. I’m holding back the urge to call you and tell you how I really feel. (We suspect she won’t be done for a while)
    
12. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about the pregnancy a year and a half ago. I deserved to know. Why don’t you want me in your life? (Umm we announced on Christmas of last year, it’s not even been a year. She was very clearly too drunk to do realize what day it was).
    
13. DH needs to man up. Stop being a piece of shit and a coward. I will see my grandson, sooner than you think. (And she doesn’t understand why we don’t want her in our lives or near LO?)
    

After she was done texting she attempted to FaceTime DH several times at around 1 am. Then she went silent. We followed the cop’s instructions to not block her and not respond or answer any calls. If she calls from another number we document the number. We will also be calling to update the case since she continued to text and try to call after the cop left. He assured us we responded well by making it clear she wasn’t invited and we didn’t want her to contact us anymore. He said with a 5 month old baby we did the right thing to call and start a paper trail.
He was also glad we have a security system in places with cameras that cover our entire home. We just had this installed this week because of a series of car break ins near our gated community.
We are making several back ups of any text messages, voicemails and call logs. Our code for guests to enter our community will be changed next week when the office opens, and we ordered extra batteries for all our out door security cameras.
We will be staying home as much as possible, we need to make one trip to the grocery store next week so we don’t have to leave for a while. I will be staying home with LO while DH makes this trip. He’s going to a different town and a completely different store than we normally go to.
DH will not stop apologizing for me marrying into this level of crazy, that he thought she was a harmless type of crazy where she would stick to getting drunk and complaining to everyone else about us while leaving us alone.
I really believe she has been planning to try to ambush us since she found out I got pregnant, and DH now believes me.
While today has been quiet we are waiting for the fallout from her telling SIL and/or FIL her version of events. We are also waiting for her work day to be over and for her start drinking again, which means she’ll probably try to contact us or show up before she’s too drunk to stand.
I’m scared for my LO, scared that I can’t protect him enough or prepare him enough for when he turns 18 and he can make the decision to talk to her. We plan on telling him the truth when he’s old enough, but we know he gets to make his own decisions when he turns 18 I just don’t want him hurt by her or sucked into her drama.

TLDR: Shannon’s spying on my brother through his email account and keeps asking for money, so my brother is playing a little joke on her. And Minnie caused a boy’s life to be ruined. Two stories for one.
Okay, so for some context, like I said my brother is planning to come here for Christmas and got plane tickets to do so. When he did, the flight information was sent to his email. The next day after doing this, Shannon sends him a text asking about his flight. Now, my brother hadn’t told anyone he was flying. He calls her, asking how she knows. Shannon admits she has his email password. We knew he had his facebook password, and Esme’s, causing them to have to make new ones since she changed Esme’s password so she couldn’t get into it without Shannon logging her in. But, we didn’t know she also had access to his old email account. My brother told her to get off his emails and is planning on changing the password. Before he hangs up, Shannon has a small request.
She wants $350 from him, since he could afford to fly with Esme, he should be able to afford that. My brother, tired of her continuously asking for large amounts of money, he tells her, “Sure.” And Shannon is giddy.
About an hour after doing this, my brother calls my mom to let him know what happened and what Shannon asked for, he then asked if he was in the wrong for lying to her because he was starting to feel guilty because he started worrying that Shannon would blow through her money because she’s now expecting $350 from him.
My mom and I agreed that he shouldn’t feel guilty about it, she left him for another man and tried to get him fired, she has completely badgered him for money since then and doesn’t understand no means no, so we think this little prank on her might make her think twice before asking. Is it the right thing to do? Probably not.
My brother was still feeling guilty until my mom reported a post that Shannon had on facebook, that was bragging that Taylor was buying her a new car because her old one had been “vandalized” twice. (It wasn’t.) He was got angry, stating that, “She’s begging me for hundreds of dollars and then goes around bragging he’s buying her a new car?! She was telling them they were low on money!”
Now, because Shannon lies so much, we don’t know if she’s actually getting a new car, however it’s the idea of it.
I received a lot of positive feedback from these posts and I want to thank you all for the advice you’ve given my brother, I’ve passed it onto him and he’s trying to think of ways to use it so he can be a divorce from Shannon. I did get one comment saying if he’s in a union, that’ll help him get a lawyer, but sadly my brother informed me that police officers in his area are not allowed to have unions. My mom’s sister also came to the same conclusion that some other comments brought up, that the reason that she’s not meeting my brother to sign papers is because she hasn’t actually filed or doesn’t have the papers. So, my brother is planning to get some of his own drawn up. However, my mom thinks it’s because of another reason, Shannon was supposed to get a house with Taylor and it was around this time she wanted the divorce, but plans fell through and that’s when she stopped asking. So, my mother believes Shannon only wanted a divorce to prevent my brother from trying anything with her house, not that he could since judges in our area normally will not split property if it’s bought after two people split.
Some people also brought up Shannon’s children, how they’re going to be those apples that don’t fall far from the tree, and I wanted to hope that they didn’t grow up like her but a lot of things happened that make me think they’re going to be exactly like their mother. A recent event really made me think this is likely; Minnie (The one who threw rocks at my mother and threatened to beat Esme up) ruined a boy’s life the other day. He’s now kicked off the basketball team and is facing legal actions. No, Minnie didn’t make an allegation or anything like that, what happened actually didn’t involve Minnie at all. But, she was bragging about how she basically ruined this person’s life. What happened was Minnie was sitting behind the boy in class. The boy was talking to one of his friends about his girlfriend, who is the EXACT same age as him. And then proceeded to share a private photo she sent him with his friend. Minnie saw the photo and went to the principal. The school is treating it as underage porno and this boy’s entire life could now be ruined because of this. While I know you shouldn’t share private photos, I think this is way too far.
Well, after Minnie started bragging about what she did, a lot of the kids at the school turned against her. I’m not sure what she thought would happen, this boy was very well liked and one of the main players on the basketball team. Some of them are ignoring her while others are telling her straight up that what she did was horrible, they demand to know why she did it. Minnie instead turned around and started being nasty to Esme, who had nothing to do with the situation, blaming her for people treating her the way that they are. Esme is, of course, confused on how Minnie can blame her for her actions.
And I can’t help but think of Minnie being a Mini Shannon, she does things to purposely hurt people and when she’s called out it’s always someone else’s fault. Part of me also worries about Minnie doing something to try and get Esme kicked off the cheerleading team, I’ve never known her to lie like Shannon does, but I do know she does look for stuff to get people in trouble and does blow things out of proportion. She purposely spies and listens in on conversations just so she can run and tell anyone she views as an authority figure. During times I had to babysit them, every ten minutes she was telling me something her siblings were doing. If I said something to them, she’d tell Shannon I got onto them in order to try and get me in trouble because she knew her mother got angry if anyone said anything about her kids misbehaving. Two for the price of one, I guess.
I also feel bad for the boy she did get into trouble, what he did wasn’t good, but it wasn’t criminal. I don’t think he had ill-intent or anything like that, I think he was just bragging to his friend. It was kind of shocking to find out someone that’s 15 years old can get charged for being a pedo for showing an image of his girlfriend. (If I remember correctly, Esme told me the girlfriend is older by around 6 months). But, I looked into our laws here and yeah, even though he only showed to one other person, two if you count Minnie spying, it’s consider him showing porno. And because she’s 15 … Yeah. Due to that, he can be charged with underage porno, even though he himself is underage and it was a photo sent to him. If he had taken it without her permission, then yeah I could see how this kid is probably troubled. But, I think it was just some kid bragging to his friend in this case, unaware he was breaking any laws.
I don’t know if he’s facing time in Juvey, if this will be on his personal record, if he can be tried as an adult (probably unlikely), or if he’ll get any community service. It’s too early to know, all I do know is that the police are doing an investigation and that he’s banned from basketball. It wasn’t a photo he took without consent or anything like that, she admits to sending it to him. However, in the eyes of the law, this doesn't matter. All that matters is that he had a photo of someone underage and the laws are designed to protect minors from predators. As far as the law is concerned, this boy is a predator and they plan to treat as such.
I’m a bit disturbed about how proud Minnie was of it until everyone else at their school called her out, like she was happy he got into serious trouble.
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EDIT: I just want to put this in here for clarification because I received a comment about this, if Minnie had gone to the girlfriend and told him he showed the picture to his friend, I would have supported her choice because it would have been the right thing to do; to leave it between the boyfriend and girlfriend. But, instead, Minnie purposely tried to get him in trouble. The kid wasn't showing the picture to everyone, just the one friend. But, now, because of all this, everyone in the entire school knows about the photo. Minnie's actions weren't wrong because she's Shannon's daughter, they're wrong because she may have ruined someone's life because she wanted to get someone in trouble. If she had done it to keep the picture from being spread or, like I said, went to the girlfriend about it, it would be different. If the boy was showing multiple friends/people, then I'd say he'd need to face some harsh punishment. However, I don't believe some boy, ignorant of child porno laws, who showed one person should face legal action. His girlfriend should probably break up with him, but I don't think he should have a criminal record due to it.
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Also, the way the law worked, he could have shown zero people and will still be charged. The law is only concerned about you having the content, not about it being shared. His girlfriend could also face legal action when they go to question/investigate her because if she saved any of the photos of herself or saved any private photos he sent her, she will also be considered to be in possession of child porno. So, two teenagers could have a criminal record for sexting each other.