put out to sea.

Anyone who knows me knows that I despise getting myself involved in drama. However, there are times when it’s necessary, and one such time is to defend a friend. This post is rather long, but I ask you to please read it in its entirety. This is a summary of a full length callout, which you can read here.

Some of you may have seen the post by Tony (brashir) calling out Serena (empathicstars) – if you haven’t, I’ll link to it here. It’s pretty shocking, and horrifying to read. There’s just one problem: none of it is true.

Tony had a bad breakup with his fiance, Ray, back in August of 2019 (some of you may remember him as seamworn). Tony claims that Ray was abusive towards him. This is a lie. Ray has made mistakes, certainly, and their relationship was not a healthy one. But all of Tony’s claims of abuse simply don’t line up, and most of the evidence points to Tony as the abusive one. The same is true for Tony’s other claims – that Ray is racist, that he fakes his triggers, that he’s stolen money, that he forces survivors to write r*pe with him, etc. – all are untrue.

After their breakup, Serena chose to remain friends with both Tony and Ray. She was extremely upfront about this decision, and Tony told her repeatedly, for months, that this was fine. He did try to manipulate her into dropping Ray, but she never did so, as Ray had actually apologized for his actions and was working hard to become the best person he could be away from Tony’s influence.

In regards to Tony’s claim that Serena is best friends with a racist white person: this is referring to me. About a year and a half ago, someone in the Doctor Who RPC added the character Krasko, who is canonically a racially motivated mass murder, to their multimuse. Tony and others in the RPC burst into action, calling this person out and harassing them over their choice of muse. I am someone who is very open about separation of IC and OOC – it’s featured prominently in my rules that I do not believe writing something is the same as supporting it – and felt very uncomfortable watching this go down.

I did not address the situation directly, but I did reblog a rather targeted PSA post. Ray (still together with Tony at the time) messaged me to confront me about it. I then blocked him at his request, and took the chance to cut off Tony and several others in the RPC that I had been growing more and more uncomfortable with. In hindsight, I was not as open to conversation as I could have been, and I don’t think I would defend that person’s writing today, not unless I actually knew them and could personally vouch for the respectfulness of their portrayal. However, I would still defend them from harassment, as that is never an appropriate response under any circumstances.

Serena and I did discuss this at the time, and she made it clear that she did not agree with my stance. However, we still remained friends. Serena was again upfront about this, and no one ever told her to drop me. The claim that Serena is ignoring BIPOC voices is untrue. The BIPOC voices he’s referring to are only him and his friends, and those voices have lied to her face. Serena was told clearly, directly, and repeatedly that it was okay to be friends with Ray, that it was okay to be friends with me. Then a few months ago, Tony dug up the incident I had with Ray so he could turn on a dime and attack Serena for it, triggering her and driving her out of their friend group for good.

Additionally, since this has happened, Serena has been directly harassed and most recently doxxed. A friend still in Tony’s server gave Joel (Serena’s husband) a warning that Serena’s phone number had been shared in the group, and that they were signing her up for spam. Since then, Serena has received various Trump and Republican propaganda texts, as well as explicit imagery and videos. The group has also evaded blocks to harass her on Tumblr. Ray has been dealing with similar forms of harassment for over a year now, and I’ve even had a small taste of it myself when one of Tony’s group made an alt Discord account in an effort to sneak into one of my servers.

At this point, I frankly don’t care what Serena or Ray supposedly did or did not do. This behavior is unacceptable. This behavior is illegal. Both Serena and Ray have tried to apologize, tried to ignore everything and move on, but Tony keeps dragging the same issues up, over and over, refusing to let anyone let it go.

And this is not motivated by racism, whatever Tony claims. If racism were the root of the problem, I would be the target, not Serena. Yet I have received almost nothing about this, while Serena has been doxxed and harassed. The root of the problem is that Serena did not cut Ray off like Tony wanted, and he lost his control over her. He’s masked his anger as social justice to rally his friend group against her.

I cannot stress the following statement enough: Tony is a bully. He is a liar, an abuser, a manipulator, and so much more. This has reached the point where legal action is being seriously considered, and that is not a decision any of us have made lightly. We have also been reporting this to Discord and to Tumblr, in hopes that something will force this to come to an end; this process is ongoing.

Over the past several months, I have been working on a callout to bring all of this to light, in the hopes that others will see how bad the situation has been and hopefully take measures to protect themselves from being targeted in the way that we have. That document is now complete, and it’s linked here. It’s quite long, but it debunks Tony’s many false claims and provides evidence for everything I’ve stated above. It also namedrops everyone in Tony’s friend group that has been directly involved in his harassment and doxxing, for awareness.

If you feel that Serena, Ray, or I have done something unforgivable – I understand. If you feel you must cut us off, we will miss you, but we will not fight you on it. But please, please do not trust Tony, and be extremely wary if you choose to keep him in your life.

sold my soul, broke my bones,                                         tell me, what did I get? did my time, toed the line,                                         ain’t seen anything yet make it hurt, I’ll eat the dirt,                                         I just don’t care anymore SHOW ME THE PROMISELAND