This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
I am NOT OP. Original post by u/ThrowRAcrib in r/relationship_advice
trigger warnings:
show spoiler
child neglect, suicide
This was previously posted here over a year ago.
My wife and her best friend accused me of having an affair, then got angry when I didn't have one - 23/08/21
I (31M) and my wife (29F) had a baby last December. It was a traumatic birth and my wife developed postpartum depression. While she was originally going to go back to work after the birth, she's been struggling enough that we decided to wait until our daughter was a year old and reassess. She has been going to therapy weekly. With my wife home full time, I've had to work increased hours. This is something we discussed prior to making this decision and she knew this from the start.
A few weeks ago, my boss approached me about a project that would require a lot of overtime in a short amount of time. It would both be great financially and for my career. I talked to my wife about it and she agreed that I should say yes to my boss. For the four weeks I'd be working on this, my MIL and her best friend, Jessie (29F, name changed) would come help out with some of the duties that I typically do.
Jessie is a SAHM with a four year-old and a two year-old. She began coming over during the day and would watch the kids with my wife.
Three weeks into the project, it became clear that we'd need a few more weeks to get it together. I went home that night and talked to my wife about it. She said she was okay with it, but got very cold in the days after. It wasn't unusual behavior over the past few months, so I didn't think much about it and tried not to take it personally.
During the last week of the project, I got home one night and saw that Jessie was still at the house. I didn't think much about it, said hi to her and my wife, and then went to go check on our daughter. Before I could get to her room, I heard Jessie say something along the lines of, "He doesn't even stop to greet you. Definitely a sign."
I turned around and asked what it was a sign of. Immediately, my wife started crying and Jessie started accusing me of having an affair. She told me that I must hate my wife because she has PPD and am not attracted to her because she gained weight from the pregnancy. Neither of these things are true. I'm trying my best to help my wife through her PPD while supporting our family. And I think she looks great how she is right now, she just hasn't wanted to have sex and I haven't pushed.
Jessie then demanded to see my phone. I told her no. She told me that's a sign that I'm guilty. I told my wife that I would let her see my phone if she wanted to. She nodded and something inside me broke. I guess it was the thought that she actually believed I was having an affair really got to me. And that she didn't trust me after everything we've been through.
Well, she looked through the phone and there was no evidence. Jessie started saying that I deleted the evidence. She started screaming and woke up our daughter, so I told her to get out of the house. Eventually, she left and I went to calm our daughter since my wife was still on the couch crying.
When my daughter was asleep again, I sat down by my wife and tried to talk to her about what's been happening. She told me that she's been worried ever since I started working all the overtime. I told her that we'd talked about how good of an opportunity it was and she agreed to letting me take on this project. She said it was very suspicious to increase the length of the project. I told her that sometimes that happens. She wanted more evidence, so I showed her messages and emails with timestamps from work and paystubs showing the OT. She said she believed me and was sorry for doubting me, it was just that Jessie had been telling her that these were all signs that I was cheating. I asked her why she believed Jessie more than me, and why she didn't come to me with her concerns. She didn't have a real answer.
It's been a couple weeks and the project is over. I actually scaled back and am trying to work a little less than I was before the project so I can spend more time with my wife and daughter. But I feel so burnt out trying to do everything and becoming resentful because in the back of my mind, I know that my wife doesn't trust me. I ask myself, what happens the next time I have a project? Or I have to run errands one day? Or if I have a business trip? Am I going to come back every time to accusations that I'm cheating?
I've tried bringing it up a couple times but my wife tells me it's not the time and that she's tired or sad. I try to be mindful of her feelings but I wonder if that means that I can never have any of my own.
I'm not sure what to do here. Any advice for how I can move forward?
Thank you to everyone for all of the advice and support on my previous post. I think a lot of you pointed out what should have been obvious, that I need to get a therapist and start looking after my own mental health. A couple people asked for an update, so I'm giving one, but it's not happy.
That night I approached my wife and told her that I was going to find a therapist. I didn't connect it to her accusations or anything, just said that I was having a tough time and needed therapy. She shrugged and told me to do whatever.
Next day, I got home from work and our room and my home office were ripped apart. Things everywhere. Important papers scattered. I don't see her but our daughter's in her room crying... My wife left her alone, her cell phone's off. I call my in-laws and a few friends, but no one's seen her. I'm starting to get worried and I call my mom to see if she can babysit while I go out and look for her.
Before my mom can get home, my wife gets back -- Jessie's driving. Jessie doesn't come in (she hasn't been back in the house since I kicked her out because she was "offended" by my behavior) but my wife does. She's clearly upset, been crying. I ask what happened. I thought at first the house might have been robbed. She starts screaming at me that I'm being unfaithful and that the therapy is a front so I can meet my mistress. I try to calm her down and tell her that's not true, but she came at me and she hit me. My nose is broken.
She kind of realized what she did and sat down on the couch and went comatose, just stared at the wall. I went into my daughter's room and locked the door. Called my mom to tell her what happened (she was already on her way) and my MIL to ask her to come over and take care of my wife. I packed a bag for my daughter and when my mom got there, we left. My wife didn't even look up. We dropped my daughter off with my dad and then went to urgent care for my nose. I got blood all over my mom's new Subaru.
My daughter and I are staying with my parents for a while and my wife's staying with hers. I am looking into getting a restraining order against Jessie.
My wife and I are separating. I love her but I won't live with someone who hurts me and who could potentially hurt our daughter. I am not going forward with a divorce yet, with the hopes that my wife will get the treatment she needs and we can work things out. My in-laws told me that they're looking at in-patient treatment at a local hospital. But I also have everything well documented in case of an eventual custody battle.
My heart's broken because I know this isn't my wife, this is a sickness in her mind. But I need to keep myself and our daughter safe and give her the space to recover. I'm hoping that this is the right decision.
Thanks again everyone.
Edit: Thank you all for your feedback. I've talked to my parents after reading your comments and came to the conclusion that for my daughter's protection, I need to file a police report. I am headed to the station now.
Do I let the woman I fault with my wife's death let her speak at her funeral? - 01/09/21
TL;DR: A woman fed lies to my wife, suffering from postpartum depression, that led to a mental breakdown and her death. She now wants to speak at my wife's funeral. Denying her would start trouble, which I'm not sure would be worth it.
There's more context for this situation in my post history.
My wife passed on early Monday morning. Convinced by her friend Jessie that I was having an affair that I did not have, she had a mental break, which resulted in my taking our infant daughter and staying with my parents for a while. She was with her parents, who planned on taking her to the hospital for in-patient treatment on Monday.
On Sunday night she came to my parents' house and demanded I give her our daughter. Because she had left her alone for several hours the last time she was responsible for her and had gotten physical with me, I refused. I offered to let her come in and spend time with her while my parents and I were present, but she didn't want to come in and wanted to take our daughter with her. She was upset but left eventually. A few hours later, she drove her parents' car into a tree and died.
The friend, Jessie, came to see my daughter and me yesterday. After some tears, she told me that she was planning to speak at my wife's funeral. She had already cleared it with my in-laws but was letting me know as a courtesy. I told her she would not be speaking at the funeral. We fought and she left after telling me that I was an asshole and not the only person who loved my wife.
I talked to my in-laws who are adamant that Jessie be allowed to speak. She and my wife knew each other since they were kids and my in-laws are close to her. We're all very fragile right now and I fear that pushing this further would hurt my relationship with my in-laws, which I don't want. Still, the thought of seeing Jessie up there at my wife's funeral makes me feel sick. I don't think I can stand to listen to her, knowing that she took joy in my wife's deteriorating mental health and picked up my wife, leaving my daughter home alone.
That being said, I don't trust myself to make the best decisions right now. My mind's clouded by grief, guilt, and fear. My parents are split on what to do and I don't have the energy to reach out to my friends. So I'm coming here again to ask for your advice.
Thank you.
Reminder - I am not the original poster.
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
Supernatural just ended its 15 year run. To catch up, you can read about the recent Destiel love confession; an actor who appeared in 4 episodes and harassed fans; a comprehensive writeup of the fandom in general, especially "tinhatting"; more general fandom drama; or a racist Haiti AU fic. Supernatural provided no shortage of drama.
But if you don't want to read all those previous writeups, the summary for this one is:
Over the course of the show's run, the fans were divided in to two groups. Group One were people who thought the show should be focused on the brothers, Dean and Sam (played by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, respectively. Some shipped the brothers together. Group Two were people who thought Castiel (played by Misha Collins) should have a more prominent role and fuck Dean (ship name "Destiel"--you've heard of it). (Edit: There is, arguably, a third group of people who watched the show as a show, but I haven't actually met anyone who has).
It became abundantly clear that The Powers That Be (writers, producers, Jensen and Jared) were in the former group (minus the "Wincest" shipping). They shunted Misha/Cas off for episodes at a time with flimsy excuses, tried to write him completely off in one season and then haphazardly brought him back after fan uproar, and hazed/bullied Misha on set (ex: Misha talked about how Jared would tickle his balls out of the cameraman's view so that it looked like Misha was messing up his lines, among other things).
Misha said his final scene was his now-infamous love confession, which many fans lovingly described as "embarrassing." After fifteen years of pent-up tension, Castiel finally gets the courage to confess his love to Dean--and Dean responds with facial expressions that were memeified as "trying not to say a slur" to "trying not to commit a hate crime." Then, after confessing his love, Castiel gets sucked away to supermegahell, never to be seen again!
But fans knew that couldn't be his last scene...As one tumblr post said, "honestly it's quite impressive how supernatural, a show in which everybody dies & no one stays dead, has managed to convince a huge chunk of people that one of its leads is not coming back for the finale"
And it's true. Pretty much every character, major or minor, on SPN has died at least six times. Fans pulled out release photos, social media pics, and lines from interviews to prove without a shadow of a doubt that Castiel would be in the last episode--whether Destiel was made official or not.
What really gave fans hope, though, is that actor Jensen Ackles said he felt "uneasy" about the ending:
"And I just walked out of there kind of uneasy. I don’t know if it was just the fact that I just heard the ending of a show that had been going for 15 years and I’m just too close to it to really accept a finality to it."
And since he's historically uneasy about Destiel, fans connected the dots: Destiel would be canon in the finale!
So did we see Cas again? SPOILERS, obvs.
Here's what happened in the finale: Sam and Dean are bored. After everything was literally resolved in the penultimate episode, the world is pretty peaceful. Cut to commercial. Finally, they find a hunt. Cut to commercial. They follow some leads. Cut to commercial. They fight the monsters. Dean gets impaled on, like, a nail on a barn column or something and with his dying breath he tells Sam he's proud of him and asks for permission to die. This takes, like, a full 15 minutes. Cut to commercial. There's a montage of Sam being sad and petting a dog. Cut to commercial. Dean goes to heaven, reunites with a loved one (not Cas) and drives around. Cut to commercial. Montage of Sam raising a kid and Dean driving around. Cut to commercial. Sam dies a natural death of old age. Cut to commercial. The brothers reunite in Heaven.
Oh, and there was an emo version of Carry On, Wayward Son.
Basically the episode was three montages in a trenchcoat, with the lead characters meeting anticlimactic ends. Dean Winchester dies of tetanus. Sam wears a powdered wig from a Halloween discount store to show the passage of time.
Cas is mentioned twice throughout the episode, one line where Dean or Sam is like "I'm sad Cas is gone" and Sam or Dean is like "We have to move on and keep fighting" and one line that implies Cas escaped from supermegahell, somehow, but no more on that.
The response:
" Wow y’all got hate crimed harder than Sherlock fans did. I am very very sorry"
"GAY RIGHTS TOOK A STEP BACK THIS FINALE SINGLEHANDEDLY REPEALED SAME SEX MARRIAGE"
" that episode seemed like a love letter to Wincest shippers and a HUGE fuck you to destiel shippers ngl"
" they really hated cas and misha so much that they spent the finale pandering to the fans who wanted the brothers to fuck"
But even the Wincest shippers weren't happy, because the ending was boring and Dean's death was lame. But no one was more upset than Destiel shippers, who held out hope that Cas would return. So of course there's the angry hashtag:
" you're right dabb, it WAS bold to end 12 years of queerbaiting with a bury your gays and then never mention your queer lead again, very bold !! #cwspnisoverparty"
" The fact that Cas is trending because the whole fking world is raging about his pathetic excuse for an ending. He deserved so much better. #cwspnisoverparty"
" SPAM REPORT CW_SPN AND GET THAT SHIT SUSPENDED PLEASE THAT'S ALL I WANT and trend #cwspnisoverparty BUT MOSTLY REPORT THAT ACCOUNT THERE'S NO BIGGER FUCK YOU THAN THAT PLS"
And the angry tweets to the writer of the finale ep:
" ANDREW DABB IS THE WORST FCKING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO THIS SHOW AND DEAN WINCHESTER"
" sweet boy..... god i am so sorry i will miss him so much i'm plotting my revenge on @andrewdabb right fucking now. cas deserved better. cas deserved BETTER. #Supernatural"
" The #Supernaturalfinale feels like an insult. Like @cw_spn and @andrewdabb actually just kicked me in the chest and walked away laughing. What the HELL was that? "
And of course it wouldn't be a disappointing queerbait finale if there weren't a Fake Episode conspiracy:
" All I want to say is that I hope @andrewdabb releases the original script, which I very much feel was more found family friendly, but that they couldn’t execute any longer due to COVID. The fandom deserves to see it. #Supernatural"
And it turns out the most likely reason Jensen struggled with the ending is because Dean dies like a punk.
EDIT:
OK, let me clarify a few things:
- "Homophobically gay" and "Jensen/Dean is about to commit a hate crime/say a slur" are popular memes describing the 15x18 confession and Destiel in general. Ill-phrased and insensitive phrasing perhaps, but pretty popular (and also accurate).
- The remark about hazing/bullying: Misha has said that the pranking has crossed a line a few times, but the cast seems mostly friendly regardless. On the writing/producing side, his treatment seems unpleasant compared to Jared and Jensen's, but he seems fine with it and gets paid nicely. I don't want to fall down a rabbit hole of conjecture and conspiracy theorizing. If I find the specific interviews, I will provide them, but they are from a long, long time ago and there is a lot of SPN content. Like, a lot. The show's been on for 15 years.
- A lot of people think the show is bad because it is bad, not just because Destiel didn't become canon. The plot, characters, and writing in general were messy as fuck from an objective standpoint, regardless of any personal stakes.
- I forgot to mention that the finale monster of the week were vampire clowns or as the fandom calls them vampire Juggalos.
- Link to one of the interviews where Misha talks about ball fondling: https://youtu.be/8bwzaP3l_28
- In my rush to post the writeup out I glossed over the non-shippy reasons why the episode was terrible and the fandom reactions, so here is an update: UPDATE It hasn’t even been 24 hours and Jim Beaver deactivated his tweet because of fans’ rage tweeting.
Jim Beaver played Bobby, the boys’ surrogate father. He’s generally a fan favorite, but some fans flipped out because he returned for the finale but Cas didn’t:
“y'all somehow managed to bring back jim beaver and mark pelegrino but misha was the one that couldn't make it bc of covid... the third fucking person on the call sheet. ofc he was the one y'all found to be expendable.”
“You literally brought Jim Beaver who’s a person of RISK be there amongst other 80 people on a bridge NONE OF THEM WEARING MASKS and you’re telling me that you couldn’t bring Misha Collins???? naa im calling this homophobia…”
“Like let’s not act as if Jim isn’t 70 years old that you placed there among the crew with no care and also the vamp chick from season 1 that NOBODY remembers... y’all just don’t like Misha Collins there, just say it”
“the show brought back mark pellegrino, jake able, jim beaver, vampire #207 and etc but misha and shoshannah two pivotal and essential characters to sam and deans story and the show were just too much”
He posted, “Thanks to all the kind people and thanks to all the unkind people. I’m deactivating my account. So long.”
Steering away from the Destiel drama, tetanus, juggalo vampires, and wigs were also big stars of the night:
“saw six people go "TETANUS?!" on the timeline and assumed bid*n caught it but its DEAN WINCHESTER????”
“I’ve never seen supernatural but the person who said that dean never got his tetanus shot because he thinks vaccines turn you gay is the funniest person alive”
“things Old Man Sam looks like: https://couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name.tumblr.com/post/635275319674372096/things-old-man-sam-looks-like-an-english
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
I initially thought that this hardly warranted a phone call, until I remembered that my sons excursion was to the Grand Canyon...
This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
I am NOT OP. Original post by u/liberalfilmnerd76 in r/advice
I want to start calling my adoptive mom “mom” instead of her name - 30 November 2022
My bio parents put me (15m) up for adoption when I was born so I was always in foster homes until I was twelve. I had a teacher Janice (33f) who was my home room teacher.
Janice found out about me being a foster kid and how I wished I had a family. Janice had also been a foster kid growing up and so long story short she then became my foster mom and adopted me.
Janice is the best mom I could have ever asked for. She has been so unbelievably kind and loving to me and I absolutely adore her. The problem is that I don’t call her mom, I just call her Janice. I want to start calling her mom but have no idea how to without making it awkward. Please help me internet strangers.
Update:
So….. was not expecting this big of a response. Thank all of you for responding and some of the ideas made me really tear up. Anyways this morning I went to Janice and I said “good morning mom” she just looked at me and started crying then came over and hugged me and kissed my forehead. I hugged her back and she said I could call her whatever made me comfortable and that she loves me more than anything. I just replied with “I love you mom”.
So yeah hope this update makes someone’s day because it certainly made mine. Have a great day.
Also made a typo I’m 15 not 16 lol
Reminder - I am not the original poster.
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
Background
Supernatural is a CW show about two brothers, Dean and Sam, running around fighting monsters and having a lot of angst and drama with each other. It was goofy some episodes, serious in others, and tried to tackle complicated issues within the episodes. It also featured two conventionally attractive white guys. So you can see why it got popular pretty fast.
It got especially popular on Tumblr, which was the hotbed of all fandom discourse for the longest time on the internet. It was so popular on there, that it became one of the Big Three: Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock. It was one of the biggest shows on the entire internet, and it was very popular with teenage girls.
The Rise of Destiel
When it first came out, the shipping community of tumblr, a.k.a all of Tumblr, was kind of a mess, because there weren't many non-heterosexual ship options for them, as that's what Tumblr prefers over anything else. So the shippers made one of the first popular incest ships on the internet, Wincest, out of pure desperation. And if you weren't into Wincest, then you just didn't get a lot of room in that part of the fandom.
See Wincest in it's earliest forms on Fanfiction.net Wincest was in the many of the first fics in the Supernatural tag on Ao3
Wincest was so big it was even referenced in the show, when Dean and Sam visit a Supernatural(the in-universe book series about their lives written by a man with prophetic visions) Convention and meet two gay lovers who cosplayed as them.
Wincest was undethronable, until it was dethroned. When Season 4 premiered we were introduced to a new conventionally attractive white boy, Castiel. You see, Castiel was an angel who raised Dean from hell, making them basically soul-bonded forever. Even from the very beginning, he went on about how he and Dean has a special connection, and it really helped that Dean was way more popular than Sam on the show, despite Sam starting out as the main character.
You can see the progression, Wincest was dead, long live Destiel. The fics flooded Ao3, which was now the dominant fanfic site, and each new one spawned ten more based on it. The fandom blazed past everything else, with the most popular fic Twist and Shout reaching over 34,000 total kudos and 1,187,975 hits.
The popularity of the Ship boosted the show into the stratosphere on Tumblr, who finally had their gay ship to drool over. Destiel became fandom canon. One example of the many multi-gif posts made to glorify it
The show was peaking. Many girls I knew in middle school were obsessed, with the show and the pairing. Also me, I was also completely obsessed. I was very much in love.
The GayBaiting and The Fall
A lot of this section is directly ripped from this 2014 article, so please give it a read for more context.
The showrunners noticed, how could they not? They also noticed if they played upon the idea that Dean could be a lil' gay, let the show reference Castiel being so in love with him, and use a lot of romcom tropes, and maybe TELL THE ACTOR FOR CASTIEL (MISHA COLLINS) TO PLAY CAS LIKE A "JILTED LOVER" WITH DEAN, then they could drive the fandom into a frothing mess.
Queerbaiting was born on the back of this show. Queerbaiting refers to when a show teases a gay relationship for clout but never confirms it so they can have deniability. Supernatural proves that if you want a show to be popular, going to the gays never fails. Again, and Again, and AGAIN, the show teased the atmosphere between them. Just go back to the manips post and feel it.
But as time went on, and the show continued, and nothing changed or got confirmed, people on tumblr started losing interest. Newer shows to queerbait with came out, real homosexual relationships started to happen. Voltron. The shows fandom started to repress their Supernatural days and move on, especially as supernatural started entering it's 12th season. A new era had begun...
... .......
Season 15, episode 18
Season 15 was the last season of Supernatural ever, everyone looked upon this with relief, glad it was finally ending and the cast could move on. I actually started to pay attention to Supernatural in this season, out of pure interest for where it would go. The fandom made jokes about how funny it would be if they actually confirmed Destiel this season. Believe it or not, I actually thought it would happen because of Supernatural reaching the era of the Gays, 2020.
And then, episode 18 aired on the 5th of November. And then, Castiel started giving a speech about Dean, while looking directly into his eyes, and then he says, I Love You.
And then he gets dragged down to super mega ultra hell for experiencing a moment of true happiness.
What I want you to do is visit this link, https://www.tumblr.com/search/supernatural, or this one, https://www.tumblr.com/search/destiel, and scroll for a bit.
Because there's no way I can possibly condense for you the pure mixture of hilarity and fucking insanity the entire website devolved into. I'll try but I seriously don't think a single writer could capture the wild west of Tumblr at this point.
It started small, the Destiel tag was #9 on trending, every Supernatural blog in existence was reblogging and going crazy. And then people who had repressed their Supernatural memories noticed something was going on. And then popular blogs noticed what was going on. And then everyone on the entire website noticed something was going on. Tumblr refugees on Twitter noticed.
Tumblr became a supernova.
The Fallout
People were crying because it finally happened
People were making fun of them for immediately killing their gay character
People made fun of Jensen Ackles for looking extremely constipated during the confession
They make fun of the confession scene a lot
Blogs that hadn't posted in years reanimated.
And on top of all of this, other shit was completely going down. Georgia and Pennsylvania flipped colors. A fake Putin rumor spread. Hetalia was coming back. Season 5 of Sherlock was coming back(another queerbaiting show). MHA Spoilers
show spoiler
Dabi was confirmed to be Touya todoroki
Here's a really funny video recapping some of the insanity
Tumblr rose from the dead to and everyone is still going stir-fucking crazy. This is 2014 tumblr recaptured in it's purest essence so please enjoy the shitshow while you can.
Thanks Everyone
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
If I don’t find another way to start a campfire tonight, I’ll freeze to death.
This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
I am NOT OP. Original post by u/throwawaydoc9817 in r/TrueOffMyChest
—
I am leaving my wife tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier posted 1 day ago
I (45m) and my wife (44f) have been married for 10 years. We dated for 6 years before that and I got a lot of pressure to get married from my parents, her parents, her… something in my gut said that this wasn’t right. I called it cold feet and did my best to ignore it. We got married.
Pretty much the moment the ink was dry on our marriage license, things went south. On our honeymoon, she did nothing but complain I hadn’t booked a nicer hotel. In the following months she wanted a new apartment, a new car, gifts, jewelry, handbags. It was never enough. It’s like the moment she got the ring, it stopped being about me and became about what I could give her. I am a doctor. I make good money. Not good enough to support the kind of lifestyle she wants though.
We don’t have sex anymore. We don’t laugh. We don’t talk about anything but money. We have no kids (she said she wanted them before marriage then changed her mind), our home looks like a showroom, there is no warmth or joy or even comfort here. I hate it. I hate her. I am a 45 year old physician and I have barely enough savings to sustain us for 3 months. I want to retire someday, I want to enjoy my life.
I rented a cool apartment across town, in a “less desirable” neighborhood and there’s a stack of ikea furniture waiting for me to set it up there. The lease is up on the Mercedes my wife pushed me to lease next month and I will be replacing it with a used Prius. I’m starting therapy next week. I have a divorce attorney who has assured me that the prenup we signed before marriage means I won’t have to pay alimony. I hope to leave the higher-paying job that my wife insisted I take for something with less hours, sometime in the next year. I am going to ask out the pretty barista who flirts with me every morning.
I’m telling her first thing tomorrow. I’m expecting her to cry and beg and demand we try therapy. I don’t want any of that. This was never right, and I’m only sorry it took me so long to realize it. I’m sorry I’ve wasted so much of my life being married to a woman because I thought it was the right thing.
I am so excited.
Update (tried to post separately but it was taken down) posted today
First of all… damn. I didn’t expect the first post to blow up. I really was “getting it off my chest” and expected a few “good luck” comments and not much more. I know a lot of people were asking for an update so here goes:
Usually when I wake up, I go for a run or a bike ride. While I’m gone my wife gets up, gets dressed, gets a smoothie going… whatever. This morning I paced the kitchen, rehearsing what I had to tell her over and over again. When she finally came down, I felt oddly calm? I wasn’t expecting to be panicked exactly, but apprehensive at least?
I told her I needed to speak to her. She gave me an “uh huh” and didn’t look up from the coffee machine. Then I just came out with it. I told her I was leaving and that I wanted a divorce. That we hadn’t been happy in a long time and I felt as though she didn’t care about me or my emotional needs.
Pretty much instantly, the gaslighting began. She cried that I never get her flowers anymore, that I don’t do enough to support her, that I don’t care if she’s happy. I brought up the fact that I suggested therapy over a year ago and she agreed, but then made excuse after excuse not to go. I brought up the times she completely ignored the budget we worked on. I told her how it made me feel when she dismissed me when I tried to tell her how I was feeling.
The crying escalated then, along with begging for a chance to make this right, to go to therapy, that she would be better. It went like I thought it would go, and I felt absolutely nothing. I don’t care anymore. Whatever I once felt for her is just dead and gone, and she might as well have been a second cousin sobbing about her marriage for all the connection I felt to it. Eventually I just got fed up and walked out. She has been blowing up my phone with calls and texts which range from angry to begging to threatening. I started getting calls from her mother and mine too but the end of the day. I spoke briefly to my mother and calmly explained that I was sorry she didn’t hear it from me, but my wife was sucking me dry financially and emotionally and I couldn’t do it anymore. She was surprisingly supportive.
I’m currently in my new apartment. I unrolled the mattress-in-a-box and went to Walmart for sheets. I ate Thai takeout for dinner at the kitchen counter and watched a bit of Netflix on my computer. I have everything I need for the next few days. My wife is getting served tomorrow.
I keep expecting the sadness to set in but it hasn’t. I feel like a thousand pounds are off my shoulders and suddenly my future is full of possibilities. I’m going to travel, I’m going to try new restaurants, I’m going to take a job that actually makes me happy and proud instead of rich. Much to the internet’s chagrin, I will ask out the barista, because despite unpopular opinion she is both age appropriate (it’s her family’s business) and I do have the interpersonal skills to recognize the difference between customer service and actual connection.
Cheers, everyone. I’m going to have a beer and then take a walk around my new neighborhood.
Reminder- I am not the original poster.
Note: because a lot of people are commenting on “asking the barista out” thing, I will paste comment OP made about that:
Alright, folks. I’ve gotten a lot of comments begging me not to ask out the barista as it’s her job to be nice to me. I didn’t really get into the relationship I have with her because I didn’t think it was relevant to the divorce, but here goes:
I met her about a year ago. She’s 30. I don’t usually wear a wedding ring because my job requires me to scrub regularly. She actually asked me out (invited me to a food truck festival in town) a few months into knowing each other. I said I was married and she was embarrassed. Since then, we’ve had a bit of a running joke going where she asks me “so, still married?”. My current plan is to reply “not for long” and see what happens.
I appreciate the internet’s apprehension (in truth I would probably say the same thing if I didn’t know the back story) but I promise I’m not a creep
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).
I quite enjoyed writing and receiving feedback on my Halsey post, so I thought I'd do another post about a different fandom. This time, we're delving into the extremely chaotic Adam Driver standom.
PLEASE NOTE: SEVERAL COMMENTS, USERNAMES, ETC. ARE LINKED AND SCREENSHOTTED HERE FOR EVIDENCE'S SAKE. DO NOT HARASS ANYONE INVOLVED. DO NOT DOXX ANYONE OR ATTEMPT TO CHASE THEM DOWN.
TL;DR: The Adam Driver fandom is split down the middle. Things came to a head when a fan from one side of the fandom gave Adam a wooden carving of his dog and he called them out in a New Yorker article months later. It turned out the person who made the wood carving is associated with fans who are convinced he is divorced from (or in the process of divorcing) his wife after Adam had an affair with Daisy Ridley. Wank ensued.
I'm going to start with the event and work backwards to the context. Let's start with the basics.
Basic Terminology: What is a Stan?
Eminem's song "Stan" describes a so-called "stalker fan," someone who is obsessed with an artist to the point of shaping their entire life around them. The term gained some prominence on Livejournal gossip blog "Oh No They Didn't" to describe superfans of artists, actors, and celebrities. Currently, a "stan" is anyone who posts exclusively or semi-exclusively about a famous person, group, or band, and a "standom" is a fandom made up of stans.
I've previously posted about Halsey stans; this post, however, is about Adam Driver stans.
Who is Adam Driver?
You most likely know 36-year-old Adam Driver from his work in the Star Wars franchise as the fearsome Kylo Ren, son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa. (WARNING: Article may contain spoilers.) What you may not know about Adam is his strange backstory, his marriage to his wife Joanne Tucker, and his rich filmography outside of Star Wars.
Born in California and raised in Indiana in a conservative family, Adam had dreams of leaving his small town of Mishawaka to become an actor. However, after 9/11, Adam, like many Americans, found himself swept up in the wave of patriotism that seized the USA, and he applied to become a Marine. He served for three years at Camp Pendelton, California as a mortarman and speaks fondly about his time in the Corps, as well as the friends he made. He was later honorably discharged for breaking his collarbone in a mountain biking accident and watched with guilt as his friends went on to fight in the ongoing War on Terror in the Middle East.
However, Adam was already reconsidering his career path during his service. A training exercise involving white phosphorous took a turn for the deadly, and he recalls:
I was like, ‘I’m going to smoke cigarettes and be an actor when I get out.’ Those were my two thoughts. I wanted to smoke cigarettes and be an actor.
After leaving the military, Adam, like many marines, had trouble adjusting to civilian life and puttered around the Midwest doing odd jobs. His second application to the acting school, Julliard, was accepted, and Adam dropped everything to move to New York City. During his education, he fell in love with acting and found its controlled release of emotions therapeutic. You can hear his TED talk about how acting helped him express himself and adjust to civilian life here.
He met his wife, Joanne, in his cohort. The two married in 2013 and went on to found Arts in the Armed Forces, or AITAF: a charity dedicated to bringing free, high-quality theater to military bases and to veterans's families.
Adam is famously shy and reclusive. He and his wife successfully hid the fact that they had a son for two years. While he isn't rude to fans, coworkers, or industry professionals, Adam is defensive of his personal space and reacts poorly to being candidly photographed in public.
He does not have social media, giving fans very little opportunity to speak or interact with him. If you want to say hi to him at all, you either have to wait for a charity auction, camp out for a red carpet, or attend an AITAF event and hope that he's there in-person. So when Adam announced a Broadway run in 2019, fans were thrilled at the opportunity to finally meet their idol.
March-July 2019: "Burn This"
Burn This is a somewhat obscure play by playwright Lanford Wilson. A Broadway revival was performed in 2019 with Keri Russel as the main character, Anna, and Adam as her love interest, Pale. The two begin a hasty love affair when Robbie, Pale's brother and Anna's roommate, dies suddenly in a boating accident and Pale comes by to collect Robbie's belongings. Robbie was gay, and the play takes place during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.
The play isn't done often, partially because Pale is a challenging role: a fast-talking cokehead from New Jersey with violent mood swings. Pale is openly homophobic, yet spends the play trying to figure out how to mourn his brother. It takes skill to capture the subtlety in Wilson's writing and not downgrade Pale to a violent brute with no emotion. Adam originally played Pale during his tenure at Julliard and took on the role again for the Broadway revival. The play did so well that it was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival, and Adam was nominated for Best Actor in a Stage Play.
The "Burn This" Stage Door
It's common among theater fans to wait at the stage door to greet the actors, get their programs signed, and even (if they're lucky) chat with their idols for a bit. Occasionally, the crowd is sparse, but stage doors for famous actors are usually heavily crowded, even mobbed. Security is often needed for the safety of the crowd and the performers. Tom Hiddleston, for example, had a huge crowd 5-6 people deep at its thinnest when I met him after Betrayal in 2019.
Adam was no exception: the Burn This stage door usually had a moderate crowd after every show, and so the Hudson Theater was outfitted with several security guards and barricades, including a personal bodyguard for Adam himself. Early videos of the stage door show a small crowd, but as the play wore on, security measures became more intense.
In spite of the crowd, the Burn This stage door was usually pleasant and calm. Adam exited the theater promptly after the show ended each night, and he was incredibly sweet and patient with fans outside of the stage door. Throughout almost all of spring, Adam patiently stopped to sign every single person's Playbill, shake hands, and say hi. On one memorable occasion, he carried his dog, Moose, from the stage door to his car before coming back to sign programs. Plenty of videos exist on Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, and Reddit of peaceful interactions.
From my own experience at the door, I can personally say he will slow down for fans and happily greet them if they are calm and polite.
If.
June 2019: Someone Jumps The Stage
Stage door interactions slowed down around May. I was fortunate enough to meet Adam at the stage door, as were many friends who went around May 4th; others, however, waited for Adam, only to be told he was not coming. This sort of lag is normal, especially in the middle of a play run that's showing 8 performances a week: the actors are usually tired and want nothing more than to go home and get some sleep.
However, some fans were not satisfied. Some especially dedicated playgoers began staking out all entrance/exit points of the Hudson Theater. Sure enough, on days he didn't sign, Adam was leaving through the main entrance of the theater, accompanied by a small security detail. (Bear in mind that the main entrance =/= the stage door: the stage door was behind the theater and on an entirely separate street.)
A video was posted on Twitter in June 2019 of Adam leaving the main entrance of the Hudson Theater with his head down; in the background, you can hear a small crowd of people shouting after him. One woman gets right to the door of his car, but she is otherwise non-aggressive, and Adam gently turns her down before getting into the vehicle.
Reactions to this post were brief and basically amounted to, "Hey what the fuck OP," but this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to weird, out-of-touch fan behavior.
Days later, a strange Twitter thread emerged, detailing a drunk woman who had to be kicked out of the Hudson and blocked from going near Adam at the stage door. Details of the thread were corroborated by others who were either at the same show or friends with OP. The story goes like this:
A woman got a little too tipsy on 17 dollar beers at the Hudson and sat through the entire show without incident. However, just after bows had ended and the actors had left, the woman stood up, made her way to the front of the stage, and climbed up. She then promptly made her way backstage, where she reportedly gave Keri Russel a huge fright before being escorted out by security. Once she was outside of the backstage area, the stage jumper persisted in trying to dodge security and get in front of Adam, insisting she was a "friend." Adam came out and signed as normal, not once paying attention to the screaming woman trying to dodge several security guards. Adam made his way home unscathed, and the stage jumper was never seen again.
But somehow, this was not the incident that made the news. At this point, you may be wondering why this was not the most memorable incident of the Burn This stage door. How could Adam or Keri not talk about the drunk woman who suddenly appeared backstage?
That's because the incident that did make the news has its roots deep in Adam Driver standom. Those roots dig into some very dark places.
We have arrived at the most famous incident at the Burn This stage door: the dog carving.
Summer 2019: The Dog Carving
In the summer, an Adam Driver stan by the username Missus-Misanthrope waited at the stage door with a special gift for Adam Driver: a wood carving of his beloved dog, Moose.
I have seen a picture of the (supposed) carving, but to maintain Missus-Misanthrope's privacy, I will not be posting a screenshot here. Essentially, it's a small, flat block of wood with Moose's smiling face woodburned into it. I am not a fan of Missus-Misanthrope (or her kin in our fandom) by any means, but it is extremely well-done.
When Adam made his way to her at the stage door, Missus-Misanthrope greeted him and handed him the carving. A GIF of this interaction is here.
At the beginning of the GIF, Adam is looking down, presumably at the wood carving. He nods at it and thanks Missus-Misanthrope with a smile. He turns hands it off to his security team. There is a long pause where he appears to be either waiting for his security team or examining the carving. Finally, he turns back to Missus-Misanthrope without making eye contact and continues signing Playbills. His expression is neutral.
Let me be abundantly clear: this exact GIF is impossible to find. This write-up took a while, partially because I was looking all over for the damn thing. It has been scrubbed from the Internet. The original Imgur post is set to "private." Accounts have been erased, posts have been either deleted or archived, and Twitters have been suspended, deactivated, or moved. It took over a week of me asking everyone I knew, combing individual Twitters by date, and abusing the Wayback Machine before someone eventually found it and sent it to me.
Missus-Misanthrope wanted this GIF gone from the Internet. This was the interaction Adam Driver remembered from his stage door. This interaction would become infamous months later, in October, when it came up during an interview.
October 2019: The New Yorker Article
During the Burn This run, author Michael Schumer interviewed Adam Driver for the New Yorker. The article was released in October 2019 and can be found here. I highly recommend it: it's a stunning interview, capturing a lot of the nuances of Adam's personality as he goes about his pre-show ritual.
However, this interview made waves because of Adam's off-hand comment about fan interactions at the stage door (emphasis mine):
On the couch was a piece of fan art he had received at the stage door. During “Girls,” strangers would often share details about their sex lives with him. (One guy stopped him in the subway and said, “I love that scene where you pee on her in the shower,” then turned to his girlfriend and said, fondly, “I pee on her all the time.”) But “Star Wars” has made him uncomfortably famous. “This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog,” he said.
The stage jumper, the fans pursuing him at all doors into and out of the Hudson, seemed to fade away in comparison to this ten seconds of stage door history. Adam mentions the "creepy wood carving," and it is never touched upon again. But that one sentence sent stans into fits.
Some began gleefully sharing the original GIF of the interaction; others laughed at Missus-Misanthrope or showed her pity. Still more questioned whether or not it was appropriate to give Adam a portrait of his dog at all: even though Adam has featured Moose in photoshoots, stage door interactions, and even a news interview, opinions are mixed about how much fans are allowed to comment on his personal life. The wood carving of Moose seemed to toe that line in an uncomfortable way and ignited heated discussion on what behavior was "allowed" and "not allowed."
But there is a short passage just after Adam's comment about the wood carving that hints at the dark heart of this scandal:
He and Tucker have a young son, whose birth they kept hidden from the press for two years, in what Driver called “a military operation.” Last fall, after Tucker’s sister, who was launching a peacoat business, accidentally made her Instagram account public and someone noticed the back of his son’s head in one picture, the news wound up on Page Six.
Under what circumstances would Adam and Joanne have to hide a child for two years? Recall that Adam was not just scandalized by the wood carving (emphasis mine):
“This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog."
No, something about Missus-Misanthrope herself had made him deeply uncomfortable. The wood carving wasn't the whole of the issue: it was something about how the fandom had treated his wife and the news of their child.
Here was where the real drama about this tiny wood carving lied.
Daiver Fandom and adamdriverfans
Missus-Misanthrope was part of a subreddit called "adamdriverfans." Not to be confused with the main Adam Driver subreddit, "adamdriver," adamdriverfans is incredibly small (only about 3000 subscribers) and, on the surface, appears to be a normal subreddit about Adam and his work. EDIT: It's 3,000 subcribers, not 300. Missed a zero!
However, probe deeper, and adamdriverfans reveals its true nature. The subreddit is, in part, a haven for discussion between Daivers, or people that "ship" Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley and want them to be in a relationship. ("Ship" is short for "relationship.")
Daivers are not to be confused with "Reylos," Star Wars fans who want Adam and Daisy's respective characters, Kylo Ren and Rey, to date. Daivers go one step further and want the actors to be together. Any Daivers found on adamdriverfans are the most extreme iteration of this kind of 'shipper: they believe that Adam and Daisy had an affair, followed by a falling-out somewhere around The Force Awakens, and that Lucasfilm (and their respective publicists) have been keeping them separate. This line of thinking also posits that Joanne is an ice queen keeping Adam on a short leash.
This is not to say that all posters on adamdriverfans are Daivers; many want what's best for Adam and see it as their right to comment on Adam's personal life. But it's challenging to separate posts from true-blue Daivers, posts from those who think Adam and Daisy had an affair, and posts from users who simply hate Joanne Tucker. In my opinion, it's impossible to go near the subreddit unless you believe, on some level, that Joanne and Adam should separate, and that Daisy is a factor in that separation.
Multiple posts exist trashing Joanne Tucker and questioning whether or not the baby is Adam's. Someone doxxed Adam and Joanne and discovered multiple residences, fueling speculation on whether or not they were "secretly" divorced or otherwise separated. There is "evidence" that their marriage is a sham or otherwise a marriage of convenience.
Supporters of Joanne and Adam's marriage and critiques of the subreddit are considered "blind" mean girls ignoring the truth and looking for someone to bully. In reality, the fans on adamdriverfans are hostile towards non-members: One poster even called other women "creepy" for asking to shake Adam's hand at the stage door. Still another post implies that fans who don't believe the rumors are waiting for their chance to sleep with Adam.
For its part, the mods of adamdriverfans posit the subreddit as a place for healthy discussion. Other stans treat adamdriverfans as a joke, leading the mods to be mostly hostile to those questioning the constant dunking on Adam and his wife. Dissenters have even been speculated to be PR people deflecting any discussion of Joanne and Adam's relationship in the hopes of saving *Burn This'*s ticket sales:
4Chan is full of PR people trying to shut down discussion by posting outrageous, disprovable claims in an effort to discredit all info about Joanne. You are a threat because you have a credible story.
This is why Burn This is selling slowly. There are tickets available for every single night and whole parts of the theatre are empty on some nights. Joanne is a PR disaster. They can’t even call on their friends and connections to help fill the seats
It's worthy of note that the Daiver and anti-Joanne communities extends into TikTok and other social media: for example, there is an entire Instagram account called "ihatejoannetucker" dedicated to posting personal photos and making fun of Joanne. Here, I focus on adamdriverfans because it was the main vehicle for Missus-Misanthrope to post her thoughts and feelings.
MissusMisanthrope's Backstory
Missus-Misanthrope had been recognized by Adam for a reason: she had already tried to pass a carving (speculated to be the very same dog carving given in 2019) to Adam via Joanne at an AITAF donor event in 2018.
Bear in mind that AITAF events are primarily for celebrating veterans and bringing accessible theater to them and their families. They are not fan events for Adam Driver. However, Missus-Misanthrope saw her opportunity to interact with Adam when she saw Joanne and a friend at the bar (bolding for emphasis by me):
I am an artist and had two gifts that I wanted to try to get to Adam. One was an anniversary plaque for AITAF, the other was a portrait of his dog. When I saw Joanne, I thought she would be the perfect person to help me accomplish this.
From the second I approached her, she made me feel like garbage. I was polite, I thanked her for her work with AITAF. When I said that I had gifts for Adam, she asked me if I was a veteran. When I said no, she narrowed her eyes at me and asked me "how did you get IN HERE?" as though she suspected that I had... snuck in?
"I donated money that was very hard to come by and purchased a ticket" I responded.
She chuckled smugly and said "oh... you're a DONOR. No. I can't help you."
I was taken aback... I was not sure that I heard her correctly. "You can't do anything? If I give them to you can you..."
"No"
Then she turned to the woman she was with and said "Lindsay, this... DONOR has PRESENTS for ADAM."
Then they both just... laughed? Like how could I EVER think that they would let me give my STUPID presents to ADAM.
Missus-Misanthrope continued describing feelings of hurt, dismissal, and betrayal.
I felt like they both viewed me like I was NOTHING.
I have never felt like such a freaking idiot in my life.
So... that was something. I almost cried. Went into the situation really admiring Joanne. Left the situation feeling really disillusioned and crappy and like I did something wrong. It sucked to look forward to that event so much and work hard to overcome anxiety to travel to NY alone and have some awful crap like that happen.
She implies that, had Adam not commented his gratitude towards donors later on in the event, she would not have felt appreciated or seen (emphasis mine):
Adam was very vocal about his appreciation of the donors to AITAF so at least I didn't feel like complete useless trash.
I hope she isn't treating a lot of donors like this. This could really make some people look at AITAF in a different light if she is the only person they interact with.
A later comment in the same thread underlines feelings of betrayal (emphasis mine):
I have played it over and over in my head and I literally didn't do anything wrong. I mean, even if I had, she is a grown woman... why was she laughing at me? I felt like I was in a freaking nightmare.
Her behavior was so ugly and childish. If she is doing this to people, they NEED to speak up. I don't know why anyone feels like they need to protect her if she is really treating people this way. This type of behavior coming from her can impact the reputation of Adam and AITAF.
I am going to be sending an official complaint to AITAF about my experience. It was just so, so not okay.
By the time Missus-Misanthrope attended the stage door in 2019, she had already publicly expressed dislike of Joanne and became a valued member of adamdriverfans. And Adam, whether through his wife or through other incidents at other AITAF events, knew full well who she was.
October 2019: Your Friendly Neighborhood Pariah
Fans elsewhere quickly identified the "creepy wood carving" girl as Missus-Misanthrope. EDIT: I've been informed that it was not fans, but Missus-Misanthrope's husband, who identified her. Her husband left an angry comment (now deleted) on the author's Twitter.
adamdriverfans, predictably, went absolutely apeshit.
The article was deemed to be "angry" and vengeful towards fans like Missus-Misanthrope for no reason. A poster deemed calling Missus-Misanthrope out in the article "classless." There was worry that Missus-Misanthrope was now in danger due to Adam's comment:
This fan has NOTHING. Who is going to protect her from the onslaught of Adam’s rabid fans and even the media who will likely try and track her down?
Other members of adamdriverfans said that Adam was well within his right to say something:
People are taking this way too personally. The fact is, there are a lot of Adam Driver "fans" out there who have been too creepy, taken things too far, and done gross stuff like deliberately scribble his wife out of photos they took together. Are those fans in the minority? Yeah, I'm positive of that.
But he has every right to his opinion and every right to express boundaries like any other person out there. I'm not even a huge fan of the dude and I get where he's coming from, regardless of how awkwardly he puts it.
He doesn't owe anybody anything. No one is entitled to him being 24/7 super nice and positive and not mentioning stuff like this.
Those who side with Missus-Misanthrope say that Adam was targeting Missus-Misanthrope on purpose:
My issue with the article was not that Adam expressed being creeped out by a fan/defending his wife. My issue is that he targeted someone specific. This fan had been having issues with AD and giving him this specific woodcarving for a YEAR now. I believe that this specific fan was mentioned on purpose. I don’t believe in coincidences.
But what about Missus-Misanthrope? Well...she didn't feel good, to put it lightly. In a statement to the subreddit entitled "Your Friendly Neighborhood Pariah," Missus-Misanthrope defended her behavior at the 2018 AITAF event:
I simply approached her in a common area of the theatre because I was advised by AITAF staff that I could talk to her about handing my gifts for AITAF and Adam off to someone who was able to help. Had I not been told that she was someone who could help me after the AITAF folks said that I should "definitely try to get the gifts to Adam" because "he will love them" I would not have even spoken to her.
All I was trying to do was give something to someone that I admire and to a foundation that I support. I wasn't trying to break up a marriage or be manipulative. I was following advice from people who work for AITAF and it ended up turning into a very unpleasant situation.
Regarding the stage door interaction, Missus-Misanthrope felt attacked and exhausted:
Less than 24 hours later, I was being attacked and insulted for basically just existing in the same place as Adam. I now just wish I had never gone.
This fandom makes me sad and a little bit sick. I am going to just continue existing as I have been in the past. I am just doing my best. If people hate me, I doubt that I can change that. I have no control over what anyone does but my own self. So I am just going to focus on being a decent person and treating others with kindness.
The mods on adamdriverfans followed up with a post on Missus-Misanthrope:
Here at this sub we have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing MissusMisanthrope and we have seen firsthand how brave she has been in the face of so much bullying and harassment – all because she had spoken about incident with Joanne Tucker and for daring to give Adam Driver a gift. What happened yesterday though is on an entirely different level altogether. What has happened to MissusMisanthrope feels like a horror story of the worst possible outcome of being a fan of a celebrity:
Bullied by the celebrity’s wife and staff.
Bullied and doxed by fans of the celebrity.
Finally, being bullied by the celebrity himself.
But curiously, according to adamdriverfans, Adam had pointed out the wrong fan:
The absolutely tragedy of this situation is (and I can not state this enough) is that he singled out the wrong person. Again, HE SINGLED OUT THE WRONG PERSON. There is another person who actively harassed JT and her family on social media (the infamous StalkerChan) but, let’s be absolutely clear about this, that wasn’t MissusMisanthrope.
This meant that there was a mysterious other fan behaving inappropriately, and that Adam had mistaken Missus-Misanthrope for the other fan.
Regardless of the error, the dice had been cast, and the votes were in: Adam Driver hated his fans, and Missus-Misanthrope was, indeed, a fandom pariah.
Aftermath: Exodus, Post Purging, and the Downward Spiral to Doucheville
I want to emphasize how challenging it was to dig up receipts for this post. That's because, shortly after the article broke, Missus-Misanthrope deleted all of her social media, and adamdriverfans began deleting older posts. When I began compiling evidence in September 2020, many old posts, tweets, etc. were completely gone. The GIF of the infamous stage door interaction had been almost completely wiped from the Internet: the original post on Imgur is private.
Shortly after the New Yorker article, Adam opened an Omaze charity campaign: By donating money to AITAF, you would be entered into a raffle to attend The Rise of Skywalker premiere with him.
However, Adam had previously voiced his distaste for peddling his autograph for money:
I don’t want to start getting into favors. It’s not about me and Star Wars. It’s about the people that we’re trying to serve and if you don’t get that then I’d rather not be associated with your money.
As a result, this Omaze campaign was met with negative reactions from those who sided with Missus-Misanthrope, with the general opinion that Adam was now a "sellout," a slave to his wife's desires to "save" AITAF from bad press. Many questioned if the Omaze campaign was an effort to repair relationships with fans after the Missus-Misanthrope scandal. Others questioned whether Adam was on a downward spiral in general, linking his "sellout" behavior to his weight loss and (supposed) fighting with Joanne.
Either way, one comment seemed to sum up the drama nicely:
It seems he is on a downward spiral to Doucheville.
Many announced that they were leaving the fandom after the Omaze campaign and after the New Yorker article. However, given the proximity to the mass exodus from the Star Wars fandom after The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters in December, it is unclear how much of the Adam standom exodus is Star Wars related and how much is Missus-Misanthrope related.
Regardless of the opinions of those on adamdriverfans, the Omaze campaign was a success. A veteran (coincidentally named Joanna) won and met Adam. A fan-run campaign started after The Rise of Skywalker raised a whopping 90,000 dollars for AITAF, funding their 2020 fiscal year and landing a personal thank-you from Adam himself. Needless to say, bad press from Missus-Misanthrope's interactions with Adam and Joanne did not stick.
It is unknown whether or not Adam will do another Broadway run in the future.
EDIT: I'm super overwhelmed and delighted by the positive reception to this post. Thank you so, so much for the great discussion and for reading this (and for giving it awards!). If you're spending money to give me awards, it would be stellar if you could give that money to BLM instead.
Disclaimer
This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.
Read the original here
