M. E. Baez - At Wit's End

She forces herself not to flex her fingers, not to run her thumb over metal no longer there - old habits that she wishes she could kill. But she's not one for killing, unfortunately. Just finding the ones who do. The irony nearly makes Lilith laugh. 

She doesn't, though. Asks: "How do you know she's not just - exploring?" Lilith gets up and crosses over to the liquor cabinet, already feeling the memories she's been trying to suppress start to break through. Ava's excuses. The revelation of what she was really doing. 'And who,' Lilith thinks as she glances darkly at Beatrice. 

"She promised." 

Lilith does laugh at that, sharp and unkind. "Promised to stop being an assassin or promised not to cheat?" 

"Yes." 

Oh, how Lilith hates her - Beatrice, so earnest and here; Ava, the temptress and gone - she hates them both. She pours herself a dram of whiskey; knocks it back. Pours again. 

"What makes you think I can even find her?" Hates herself the most for even entertaining the thought. "You know what Ava is. If she doesn't want to be found -"

"She does. That's all she's ever wanted." 

"Maybe by you," Lilith can't help but sneer. All her life she's had to compare herself to Beatrice. Of course they'd compete in this too. 

"Not just me." The movement that shifts across Beatrice's shoulders could be a shrug; a flinch. "She always wanted you too." 

Lilith wants to scream - wants to throw her glass into Beatrice's face, wants to forget Ava's name, be rid of all of this. 

Because she knows: Ava would want everything; does. 

Knows also: that Ava, with the shadows of her past, the blood on her hands, the many lives she's lived and left behind, would know better than make a promise to stay. 

But she did. And now she's missing. 

'She could be dead already,' a part of Lilith's brain suggests. The way Beatrice's face tightens makes Lilith suspect that Beatrice has had the same thought. Has reached the same conclusion. 

'Either way, I'd want to know.'

Lilith knocks back the drink, locks up the cabinet. Curses herself and Ava and Beatrice in sequence, barely holds back from crossing herself in some deranged act of heresy. Ava would've laughed. 

Lilith pulls out a fresh notebook, takes a pen from her shirt pocket. Rolls up her sleeves and looks Beatrice dead in the eye.

Hopes: that Ava is alive. 

First of all, I'm relatively new to Tumblr, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt: if voter fraud in Tumblr polls deeply upsets you, I recommend you avoid engaging with polls that enthusiastically encourage voter fraud and direct people to how-to guides about voter fraud. I'm not criticizing other anonymous WN fans for voter fraud just like I'm not criticizing Utena fandom for the MASSIVE voter fraud they did in the poll against Avatrice (or that Alphyne fandom did against Avatrice, or Harumichi, or Griddlehark), and for the same reason: this tournament allows it, loudly encourages it, and helps people figure out how to do it. I don't do it myself, but I would feel very weird about castigating someone else for following a competition's rules because they broke the "spirit" of the competition and accusing them of "cheating" when (a) I have no idea what the spirit of Tumblr polls is supposed to be, because (2) in the last four polls of the competition, our opponents (including RGU fans) were extremely enthusiastic about all the voter fraud they were doing!

Go back and check the beginning of the poll you're upset about. The note where someone was claiming the need to fight back against Avatrice voter fraud when Avatrice was losing by 65% - 35% or something. Who is pushing for voter fraud in the notes? Not Avatrice.

If you go back and look at the last poll we had? Same thing. Same person posting a "how to" guide to voter fraud and claiming that Avatrice is only winning because of it.

Same in the poll before that, during which they admitted they had committed fraud across the tournament to benefit their favorite ships, including being the clear difference between a ship advancing and not (if you don't care to look, they were taking credit for Harumichi beating Korrasami at the very end of the poll). Here's the last poll we had before this person got involved:

Looks pretty standard, right? In every poll since then, this person has started off with either massive fraud themselves, or (when they did it so much Tumblr stopped letting them make new accounts) asking/begging other people to fraud for them and posting a guide for how to do it. And people did. And Avatrice fans fought back. And won. Every time. Even when the tournaments admins actively started encouraging people to commit fraud against them.

(As far as "hacking" to win: you made this up because you were bitter, or you're repeating the accusation of someone else who did. Sorry if that hurts to hear. No one hacked Tumblr to win a poll. At worst, a bunch of people made new accounts over and over again to vote a bunch of times.)

Again: I don't care for "voter fraud," don't have the time for it, don't find it enjoyable. But I'm not going to begrudge anyone from defending themselves when struck first. Which is what happened to Avatrice in the last four polls of the tournament. As for me, my indifference to voter fraud has been consistent: I first stated it when we were down by 1000 when Harumichi fandom first started using voter fraud (at the urging of the same person, who also literally offered to bribe a Twitch streamer to try to get her to help them win). I told the person frauding on the other side to have fun, and went back to posting what I loved about Avatrice.

In the meantime, Warrior Nun fans were consistently the most respectful and decent in the face of increasingly outrageous behavior by every fandom we faced. The usual "SHIPNAME KILL," "RISE SHIPNAME WARRIORS," "respect your roots/learn your history/SHIPNAME is the blueprint," "I've never even heard of OPPOSING SHIPNAME" posts, I guess we're supposed to ignore because Tumblr notes that make you sound like you belong on Twitter are...edgy or witty or something? So set those aside if you want. You're still left with a ton of just nasty ad hominem attacks (which Warrior Nun fandom never returned). The threats were interesting ("we should dox and injure them for fun," "we should kill the fraudster"), especially when the admins didn't do anything about them except to delete the anti-harassment language from their posts going forward. The blatant racism was a special treat ("WHO ARE THESE WHITE WOMEN" when one member of the ship is Asian).

You know what though? Every time that happened...the gap got bigger. Avatrice fans posted more about why they love the ship. Avatrice won by more. And I think that's beautiful. That love beat hate. Because I agree that this should be about sharing love for something that brings you joy. Not one ship tried that strategy against Avatrice, though.

To be fair, RGU fandom had the highest percentage of people who were not like this. There were several RGU fans who actually took the time to explain what they loved about their ship (and I happen to know there's SO MUCH to love about Utenanthy!). But there were so many more who couldn't resist posting how much worse Avatrice voters were because (checks notes) they had a different order of preference for sapphic ships. There was also endless whining about voter fraud when the graph looks like this.

To me, this looks like both sides did a ton of voter fraud, Utenanthy fans started it, and Avatrice fans finished it, because more of them were more passionate about winning, and because, I imagine, the endless rudeness towards Avatrice and Warrior Nun fans made for excellent whiteboard material that fueled the voting patterns you see above. But if you want to imagine what this would have looked like with no bots, feel free to compare the semifinal round numbers of RGU with the last round in which Avatrice's graph looked "normal."

Utenanthy: 2460

Avatrice: 2776

I have no idea if that will make you feel better or worse, but my genuine hope is that it doesn't make you feel anything. Because none of this matters except to the extent it brightens or darkens your day. Revolutionary Girl Utena isn't losing the movie because of this. They aren't going back and changing the ending so Akio wins. It was a masterpiece a month ago, and it'll be a masterpiece tomorrow, and you can literally go watch it RIGHT NOW and enjoy it all again.

I was writing fan fic for Avatrice when this poll started. I continued while it was ongoing. I'm going to continue when it's done. I do that to share joy. That's it. I wasn't going to delete anything if Avatrice lost. I'm not writing anything new because they won. This was a shared (weird) experience with other fans, and an insight into a level of Tumblr toxicity I had heard about but never witnessed; that's it.

You say this experience put you off Warrior Nun and its fandom, and that's obvious your prerogative. For me, this reinforced why I love the present version of the Warrior Nun fandom. Because most fandom I see is awful. People trying to hurt each other for no good reason. People fighting over clout, or money, or popularity, or which of them is the most righteous and moral. And Warrior Nun fandom isn't like that.

When I look back on this experience, if I do, I'm not going to feel any way about the voter fraud nonsense. I'll feel proud that Avatrice fans never insulted another ship. Or shouted about killing something someone else loved as a joke. Or threatened to hurt or kill someone. Or tried to whitewash anyone or stood quietly alongside someone spewing racism because they wanted to win a Tumblr poll. Or tried to erase the love someone else had for something by saying "I've never even heard of it." Or tried, in any way, to make anyone else feel like they were wrong for loving something that brought them joy and community.

Sometimes I might feel sad that, apparently, there's not a lot of wlw fandoms on Tumblr that can say all those things.