Archive of Our Own ^beta

r/AmITheVillain · Posted by u/farm-hand-throaway 7 hours ago.

AITV for writing mean articles about my vigilante bf’s secret identity when we get into a fight

[new]

So I (26M) am in a relationship with a fellow vigilante, “Brian” (30M). In everyday life, my partner is a public figure, and I am a reporter. Though we are now aware of each other's respective civilian identities, our civilian identities are not in a public relationship (we have our reasons). Since we’ve been trying to keep our relationship out of the public eye, we often spend time together as vigilantes/heroes. My partner is a very private person, but we’ve told a few close friends and colleagues about our relationship, and that’s good enough for the both of us.

I'm going off topic, anyways, we bicker quite a bit, especially since we started working together, and every once in a while, our bickering turns into a bit of a fight. One time after a particularly bad one, I went home angry and wrote a slightly mean-spirited article critical of my partner's civilian identity. In my mind, it was a way to vent my emotions without taking them out on anyone, and I hadn’t planned to post it at all. This became a bit of a habit, and over the past few months, I have written a handful of these articles.

Here’s where it got out of hand: I’m very good friends with one of my colleagues and lent her my laptop to finish off an important article. It seems she found one of the articles sitting on my desktop, had a read through of it, and sent it along to our editor, along with hers.

So it got published… I expected Brian to be angry, but he was surprisingly chill about it. He even commented about how it helped distance our vigilante and civilian identities. Maybe that gave me the wrong idea, cause I took that as an okay to write (and publish)more of them over time... and I did.

Not instantly, but slowly over time, I wrote and published a handful more. Apparently, 1 is fine, 2 is a-okay, but 4 is pushing it. When I posted that 4th one, let’s say Brian wasn't happy. He was pretty angry actually. He told me I should tell him how I feel instead of venting my emotions in mean articles about him, and that I was harming his reputation. I don’t know where I crossed the line here from what I thought was an in-joke, so who’s the villain here?

Am I the villain for writing mean articles about my vigilante bf’s civilian identity

40 comments Share Save Hide Report 68% Upvoted