Chapter 18: Of the End
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Chapter 18: Of the End
Perspective: Eddie
And so it ended as it began: With Gordon and company on the run from the military, with me and my own team facing a court hearing, and with Daniel begrudgingly returning home.
Of course he had made his choice to move on with Gordon and the rest of the FSF, but at his request they made a special trip to swing by and drop him back in Arlington, where he met his mother. He said he didn't expect it to go well, and of course after we turned ourselves in to the military we lost touch with the others, but I have a feeling at least some part of Daniel's mother was happy to see him.
Turning ourselves in was my decision, but I wouldn't have posed it had I not been certain that Jess and Jason would go along with it. It was the right thing to do. The FSF had a startling number of members pull out when they heard that the military was swooping in. A lot of them were tired of the fighting, and I understood that, but I also understood that for some of them the fire in them would never die out. For those like Gordon, they'd do whatever was necessary to rise up and protect their people when no one else would. I admit I never completely agreed with their whole “shoot first" policy, but hopefully in a less turbulent time we would reach a point where a group like the FSF was no longer needed.
"In the end, we did what we came to do and I'm not ashamed of that. People died, people got hurt, and that I will always remember, but the world is changed now in ways that can't be undone. Whether that change is for the better or for the worse is up to us. All of us."
Jess allowed a moment for these words to sink in, the jury evidently taken aback by her new conviction.
"The most important battle we have is not against the people with guns—it's against you, because while cowards like the AFA rot in jail or in the ground, you're the ones who have to live with us and work with us. You're the ones who have to accept us."
Reflection
I will fully admit, there were some days I was less than enthusiastic about writing this story. Some days I didn't write at all. But the point was that I had a plan.
Around half way through, as I was writing Chapter 7, I stopped and thought to myself how much more frustrated I would be with my life if I didn't have this project. Regardless of whatever else I was working on, the fact that I was actually making progress on something was fulfilling, even if I hadn't yet finished it. Without that feeling, I would have just had a bunch of unfinished stories still floating around in my head, with no plan to finish any of them any time soon. If you write like I do, take it upon yourself to sit down and finish something, anything. Pick your most important story and write out a plan to finish it. You'll feel better. I promise.
The thing is, I used to hate deadlines. Mostly because I am a massive procrastinator. But it's surprisingly different when you yourself are the one giving the deadline. If the project is one you deeply enjoy and something you want to finish, something important to you, then you'll feel much more motivated to complete it. You'll also be able to give yourself as much time as you think you might need. My deadline was set to 365 days exactly, due to my homage to Unus Annus, as mentioned in the preface, but if I take up another project I'll be at ease knowing I have as much time as I need. But try to stick your the deadline once it's set. However much time you've given yourself, imagine that's all the time you have left to live, and if you immediately think “Well, if I only had that long to live, I wouldn't be writing!" then pick another story. Pick the one that you have to write, if it's the last thing you do on Earth. At the end of the day, you should go to bed satisfied in the knowledge that even if you die in your sleep and your work remains unfinished, you did as much as you could to complete it.
—
I found a post online recently by a furry who expressed the fact that they felt shunned by their own community, a person who explained that they'd had a terrible experience being a part of the fandom. What's worse is that I've seen people like this before, those who try to become a furry only to become convinced that every stigma and stereotype about us is true; those who are hounded by oversexed fetishists instead of being given a place to be safe, to be themselves. These kind of stories hurt me deeply, like a knife to my soul, because it means these people aren't experiencing the best of the fandom, rather being turned away by the worst. It means they lose hope of ever finding a safe place. It means they never become who they are.
This post almost made me stop writing, made me fear how my story might be interpreted, misread or misconstrued to be something more vile than it is. Above it all, though, one thought keeps me going: If there is even one person who loves my story as much as I do, I can die happy. I don't ever want to be the one who drives someone away from a safe place, so I decided that's what my story had to be; a safe place where furries can be themselves.
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And speaking of things that may be up for interpretation (or misinterpretation): I am fully aware that Chapter 8 will be controversial. I intended it that way. For the record, I hated writing most of it. Writing requires you to get into the mind of a character and getting into Gordon's head to write that chapter was not fun. But I do feel like it was a chapter that needed to be written, for a lot of reasons.
Addendum - Nov. 6, 2024: Yeah. Chapter 8 was just bad. I was still convinced porn was evil at this point in my life. Just ignore this, carry on.
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"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."
- Stephen King