Chapter I
July 4th 2014:
Freddie.Lounds: I don't trust people unless I can hear their voice. Call it a quirk.
Brix.Lisa: Okay, then how do you want to do this? You want to give me your phone number or something?
Freddie.Lounds: Skype voice would work just fine.
Brix.Lisa: Right, forgot about that. Call me when you're ready I guess.
Lisa was shocked that this woman was finally offering her more than just online chat. Maybe it was because she'd been so distressed that night and "Freddie" wanted to help. At the time, she'd seen nothing wrong with what had been said. She could understand that Freddie had a thing about talking to people via audio as opposed to text. There was definitely something more personal about it, more real. Not to mention there were cues people could pick up on depending on the tone being used. Lisa was curious to hear Freddie's voice as well.
Though this woman insisted her real name was Freddie, Lisa did not believe it. The circumstances of which they'd become friends were bizarre too and Lisa didn't even think the word 'friend' described what they were. Acquaintances, maybe. At least that's what they were in her own mind. She had no idea what Freddie thought of her but she doubted the term friend was anywhere in there. If she'd had to guess, Freddie was only keeping her around because as the old saying would go:
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Lisa was really only an enemy in the way that she roleplayed the same character that Freddie did online. On the same website. She was also fairly popular for it. The character was Freddie Lounds from a TV version of Hannibal that aired on NBC. One of the most hated characters on the show (if not the most hated). Lisa had gravitated to her due to their similar personalities. She had no idea why this other woman liked Freddie Lounds because this other woman, who was delusional enough to call herself Freddie, was nothing like the character. In fact, she was constantly turning the character into something she wasn't. Unfortunately, she was far more popular on that same website for Lisa to ever compete with so she found herself putting up with Freddie's nonsensical version of the character, as well as the abuse from other people who hated her own version. A situation where headcanon was being mixed with actual canon, and the headcanon was being favored over the true canon which was being ignored and despised. Lisa stuck to the true canon realm. It didn't go over well with the Fannibals.
In the first season of the show, Lisa had run a blog that was specific to that fandom. The Hannibal fandom, fans of which were referred to as "fannibals". Her blog grew in popularity very quickly and nearing the end of season one she had close to three thousand followers. This was not something she was attempting to achieve because she knew on that website, having unpopular opinions meant getting death threats, harassment, and being told to kill yourself constantly. Not to mention the fact that people would devote great periods of time to writing bizarre essays on you in order to further rumors and fuel the hatred until you couldn't take anymore and either killed yourself, deleted, or both.
Midway through the first hiatus, between season one and season two, she had deleted her blog because she had decided the harassment wasn't worth it any longer. Especially not over a TV show and a bunch of fictional characters. She switched blogs and fandoms and thought that would be the end of it. The fandom was obsessively vicious towards her, though. Something that would have probably never happened had her blog not been popular in the first place with so many followers. Her former friend turned arch-nemesis, Laura, had decided to make her life a living hell as long as she was on the website. Even if she wasn't in the fandom. She could get no peace, despite leaving them alone and that's what had sent her over the edge that day. All she'd wanted was to be left alone. She wasn't even interested in watching the show any longer and Laura had to see to it that she wasn't given any privacy. No matter what fandom she entered or who she tried to be friends with. It was getting maddening.
The events that had led her to Freddie, though, had been very interesting ones and somewhat involved Laura. Well, at least her blog. Before season two was to air, Lisa was interested in spoilers. She didn't intend to watch season two but because she roleplayed as Freddie Lounds she was curious as to what would happen to the character. After all, Freddie Lounds was slated to die that season and if that was going to happen she wanted to at least know about it. Since spoilers for the show were plentiful she went hunting for them. Part of this meant looking at the 'popular' blogs to find leads as to who might know what. One of those blogs was Laura's blog. It lead her to another blog called Tattle-Crime. Since that was the website that Freddie Lounds on the show ran (without the hyphen in the URL) and Laura was bending over backward to verbally masturbate the blog owner over how great she was, Lisa knew that whoever ran it must have had some information. As it turned out, she wasn't wrong.
The only problem was that her reputation had preceded her and Laura's rumors had reached this woman. Like everyone else on the website, Freddie hadn't bothered to research if anything being said was true or not. Laura had a way of just making statements and everyone would take whatever she said as gospel truth. Then, even if it turned out that she flat out lied, no one called her out on it or questioned why she'd said something that was obviously a lie. Like the two different times she officially confirmed David Bowie would be on the show and he never actually ended up being on the show.
Laura had gotten to such a position of power that anything she said became truth and anyone who might confront her or question her was harassed off of the website (or into another fandom) so quickly, no one had time to learn the truth. The fandom became an echo chamber, and Laura was the first person to shout some new bullshit into the void, always. People knew better than to say anything against her publicly, so it became a situation of listen and believe, or contradict and get your ass handed to you. It was not a pretty picture.
After Lisa had sent her first message to the Tattle-Crime blog, having no idea who would answer, the response she got was irritating. This Freddie woman had at some point come to believe that Lisa had sent her hate in the past, using the anonymous feature. Lisa was always puzzled by the idiots who claimed they definitely knew who they were getting anonymous hate from since it was impossible to know and anonymous for a reason. Given how the response was worded she knew that Laura had gotten to Freddie and convinced her of these things even if they were not the truth. Wanting the spoilers bad enough and believing that Freddie had them (since her blog basically screamed she was 'official' to the network) Lisa found herself in a position of ass kissing.
The very first step was the phony apology. She knew she hadn't ever sent that woman anonymous hate. She never utilized that feature because she thought it was stupid and wasn't afraid to confront someone personally with a signed message. However, she was aware if she kept denying it then she'd never get anywhere with Freddie and never get the spoilers she wanted. This turned out to be a very long and arduous process.
Even after she'd apologized and they had become 'friendly' getting any information out of that woman was like pulling teeth. Freddie claimed that she was the 'real' Freddie Lounds, but then would switch it up from time to time and say she was actually just roleplaying. Not only roleplaying but LARPing. This meant that she was not only pretending to be Freddie Lounds online but in real life as well. She said that she did this all day every day and had actually become the character. Her real-life partner was Hannibal and he roleplayed with her in real life and online as well.
She was very secretive and overly paranoid. Reluctant to give any sort of information on the belief that it was going to be used against her. The process was growing tiring. Though there were other spoilers online on different sites and some that were in great detail, none of them specifically went into what was going to happen to Freddie Lounds and that was the only thing that she wanted to know. Since this character was a side character, what little information there was to be had would only be held by this blog runner who seemed so official to the network. She resigned herself to the fact that she had no choice but to put up with this bullshit until she got what she wanted and the moment that happened she could leave.
The only problem was, she got in too deep. She quickly found that in order to get information from Freddie, she had to give something in return. This led her to pull Sam into the group. Something that she didn't realize was so dangerous at the time. Sam was an artist, a very good one, and Freddie's website was mostly about promoting artists in the Hannibal fandom. Especially art of her character, Freddie Lounds. Lisa asked Freddie if she was accepting new artists or would consider it and Freddie told her she was always looking for new talent. That was when she approached Sam and asked her if she was interested. It was a dirty trick because she already knew Sam was trying to get exposure for her work.
After Sam did some sample art for Freddie and the Tattle-Crime blog, Freddie was far more friendly. More so to Sam than herself, but it was something. Then the information started to trickle out. Eventually, Sam was called into the group and things were starting to come together. Lisa knew she was getting closer to the answers she sought, she just had to hold out a little longer.
That's around the time the offer for a Skype voice chat had been made from Freddie. In the moment, Lisa had been so distraught she hadn't fully taken in what had happened. After trading Skype information she realized this was big. It had been forever that Lisa had been trying to get outside contact information from Freddie, as she hated signing onto her old blog any time she wanted to talk to the woman. It was tedious and the chat features on the website were always so flawed and glitchy. This included the character limits. She'd tried many times to get this information and failed. Now she had it, and she was instantly sworn to secrecy to never tell anyone. Which she totally promised she wouldn't. It wasn't because she gave a crap about being loyal to Freddie but more because she couldn't think of anyone she knew who would personally give a shit if she gave out contact information. It was a stupid thing to make her promise, she thought, at least at the time.
"Hello?" She said as she answered the call.
"Hi!" Freddie replied in a cheerful voice. Lisa already wasn't in a good mood but she was now switched on to paying attention to what this woman sounded like, what her mannerisms were. Her voice was very sweet, almost phony, and oddly enough Lisa could gather this from just a one-word greeting.
"Nice to finally talk to you," Lisa said.
"Yeah, I like to match voices to written words." Freddie told her, "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine." She sighed, "I'm just sick of Laura's bullshit, aren't you friends with her? She's always promoting your blog, can't you tell her to cut it out?"
"Oh, well I don't want to get in the middle of anything or take sides." Freddie quickly dismissed. This was one of her biggest lies. Lisa already knew that because she saw just how Freddie already manipulated information to take sides of people. It seemed she'd take sides if she liked a person enough. Lisa then saw an opening to get Freddie to talk to Laura and maybe for it to work for once. There was a lot of things this woman could do for her if she just played nice long enough to see it into action. Her desire to use Freddie for all she could overrode her ability to see when things were becoming dangerous.
"I'm not asking you to take anyone's side," Lisa explained, "You could be like a mediator. Besides, like I said, you're her friend so she'd-"
"I'm not really her friend, she just promotes me a lot. To be honest, I think she's kind of annoying. She's such a tag whore." Freddie interrupted. It took a moment for Lisa to figure out what Freddie meant. It was an interesting term for the behavior Laura exhibited to keep her blog relevant and popular but actually a good description of it. The thing about being a tag whore was fairly self-explanatory. Laura would post hundreds of things a day and put those posts in every Hannibal TV show related tag on the website. This meant that anyone who happened to be looking in the tag would always see her stuff, no matter what. Laura wasn't good at writing or doing her own art. Mainly her posts consisted of her taking screenshots from the show and putting her URL on them so when people saw them or reposted them, there was an advertisement to follow her. She did this so much that everyone was always promoting her by reblogging her screen captures. It was annoyingly obnoxious behavior but it had worked, unfortunately.
"I know, she doesn't even do her own art. She thinks she owns screenshots she took from the episodes." Lisa said, "But if you don't like her, why do you let her promote you?"
"I don't let her, really. I just don't stop her either. I think she thinks I have more followers than her so if I reblog something she did then she'll get more popular. The truth is, I probably only have a third of the number of followers she does. She wouldn't even get that much promotion from me." Freddie explained. That made sense as well, seeing as how Laura's claim to fame was using Lisa's blog for promotion before trashing her to make sure she could become "queen of the fandom". By that point, Laura honestly did think she was queen and it probably did not help that she had close to twenty thousand followers who clung to her every word.
"She did the same thing to me, got me to promote her and once she topped my follower count she started rumors about me so I'd become less popular than her. Now I can't have a blog on that website without her sending her minions after me, even if I'm no longer in the fandom. She's psychotic." She explained, "I just want her to stop. Leave me alone. I'm not bothering her in a completely different fandom where I don't talk about Hannibal but she tells people to come harass me anyway. She calls it a public service to warn them where I am. It's total bullshit."
"I can talk to her and see what her version of events are but you can't expect much here. I don't know what will happen." Freddie said. Lisa nodded and got a pack of cigarettes from her glove compartment. By that point, she had pulled into a McDonald's parking lot and was leaching off of their free wi-fi to make a Skype call. It was cheaper than using her mobile data and a bit better of a connection.
"All anyone can ask is for you to try. I don't expect much anyway, not with how difficult that bitch is. I already tried to have someone mediate this. As you can probably see, it didn't turn out very well, nor did it even slightly work." Lisa told her.
A few months before that point, Lisa had found a friend who was on middle ground to mediate the dispute. The only thing Lisa had ever done 'wrong' was defend herself from being attacked. Of course, Laura had played the victim so hard to so many followers no one ever believed she'd started shit in the first place. When Lisa had explained to her friend what had happened and why things had gotten so heated, her friend had agreed to try to put an end to it so there could be some peace and quiet.
At first, Laura wouldn't even play ball. She insisted the friend was only on Lisa's side and wouldn't be fair and balanced. When the mediator finally convinced Laura that she was on neutral ground, Laura instantly demanded an apology. The only problem was that Lisa had nothing to be sorry for other than defending herself from an onslaught of attacks Laura had caused. The best apology she could come up with was I'm sorry you are such a bitch. It was eventually negotiated that if Lisa wrote an apology, Laura would write one too but Lisa had to go first. She wrote her apology, an utterly meaningless one seeing as how she hadn't done anything wrong, but thoughtful and sincere enough sounding that Laura bought it.
The return apology wasn't an apology at all. It was a list of behavioral guidelines as to how Lisa was to behave if she expected to remain on the website, and punishments she would incur if she didn't follow said guidelines. The mediator was infuriated and really let Laura have it for being such a difficult cunt and ended up deleting her blog shortly after, never to return. The mere fact that someone could be that irritated by trying to negotiate with Laura that they would abandon a website all together was very telling to Lisa. It should have been telling to most people but it hadn't harmed Laura in any actual way.
"I'll see what I can do." Freddie said, "So...hopefully that helps you feel a bit better, right?"
"Kind of." Lisa said, "But only because I am not expecting for it to work."
"I know, but you should try to be a bit more positive. You never know." Freddie replied. "You going to be okay?"
"Yeah." Lisa said, "Your name really is Freddie?"
"Yep, weird coincidence huh? It's like I was totally meant to be this character because well, I am Freddie, you know?"
"I get that you are Freddie but I mean who are you really, like when you aren't being Freddie? Even if your name also happens to be Freddie?" She asked. This was one of the things that bugged her the most. The insistence that she was Freddie Lounds because she took on the "job" of acting like the character all the time, even in real life. Lisa knew that this woman wasn't Freddie nor was she anything like Freddie (at least as it pertained to the character) and she was determined to find out more about the actual woman behind the mask who was running this website.
"The thing about that is my real life is very dull and disappointing you know. Not good, it was a very bad life. I'm not that interesting of a person," Freddie said her voice dropping and her cheer fading. This only happened for a moment before she quickly added, "But none of that matters because I AM Freddie Lounds. That's who I am."
Lisa was disturbed by this. The change in tones. How quickly she could go from dark back to cheerful. Especially since it related to her claiming she was some fictional character. It caused her to question if this Freddie could differentiate between real life and fiction. From that statement, before she switched back into Freddie mode, it appeared that she could. Except, did she normally have lucid moments like that? Or were they rare? What Lisa was sure of, as sure as she could possibly be, was that she would find out who was behind all of this pageantry. What she never expected was the void she would end up falling into trying to get the truth, and what sort of hell would await her on the other side.
