Editing Zed Sadler (section)

===Before the Story===
As a teenager he made up fake personas online, pretending to be other people due to how unsatisfied he was with being himself. During his attempts to impress people he stumbled upon a group of Internet Predators, only to be saved by mysterious people online.<ref name=":11">“The awful thing is, I didn’t even get the epiphany before, during, or immediately after.  I was just this cringey kid who hated himself so much he’d pretend to be people online.”

“A boy?  Not pretending, but-”

“Not even.  No, because I was dumb.  Somehow that felt like it was crossing a line, like it was important or something.  So I thought I was a girl and I’d pretend to be an adult woman while skipping capitalization and misspelling common words.”

“Sometimes that way of typing is faster,” Avery said.

“I’d say I was popular at school and I had a boyfriend and I was good at sports, or I’d put on another persona and say I had a tragic past.  I don’t know how the people in those spaces put up with me, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t convince anyone after five minutes of talking.”

“Being anyone but yourself?”

“Basically.  As it happened, one of those personalities I was trying on was as a hacker, and I’d make up these stupid movie-style escapades, and that was actually a personality I could back up, kind of, if I put in the work and learned some of that stuff.   That got me started.”

“That’s honestly cool.  That something good came of it.  And it doesn’t sound like a lot of bad came of it.”

“Some did.  I hurt some friendships along the way.  I got desperate to hold onto those identities, I got mean, I got into the moderator politics and manipulated the systems, tried to sabotage people who questioned the lie.  I was thirteen, fourteen, didn’t understand myself, and it seemed like the fastest, easiest way to get away from being a young teenage girl with nothing going for her in life, which was a ‘pretending’ in itself, even if I didn’t register that.”

“You found yourself, though?”

“Raymond found me.  Or one of his apprentices did.  In my search for edgy crap online that I could bring up and show people I found some pretty messed up spaces that had some Others in them.  Group of internet predators was the first.  Literal lions, tigers, bear type predator, mind.  Some randoms online bailed me out.  Then a self-propagating image that started to creep into my everyday life.  Those internet randoms bailed me out again.  I asked a friend to help fix my computer, he saw some of the stuff I was doing online, broke contact.”

“Oh no.”

“His parents worked with my parents and so it got back to my parents, they looked, they found posts where I talked about having a girlfriend, and that was the start of the train wreck.”

“It doesn’t sound like anyone had your back.”

“Nah, nobody except those internet randoms and my little sister, who didn’t really understand any of it.  Too young.  I tried to defend myself, and somewhere in there I said I hated my life, I hated being me, and that was why I was making up stuff online.  I told my dad I was contemplating some pretty dark stuff, and his response was that, uh, well, he ignored that part, focused on the part where I said hated my life.  The life he’d given me, provided for me, he took it personally.  And I was out the door.  Some sarcastic comments to go.”

“Um, geez.  That’s… that’s a nightmare.  What did you even do?”

“Freaked out.  My thoughts got pretty dark for a good while, there.  I’m pretty darn lucky that people at the youth shelter had, uh, very gentle voices.  They said I could legally go home my parents had an obligation to care for me, but who would want to go back to that?  I found a way online, went looking for trouble this time.  Regretted it pretty quickly, found some cyberbullies, Others, who were a little too good at finding weak points and I had a lot, y’know?”

“Why go looking?”

“Because I was curious, and because flirting with danger was a middle ground between what I’d talked to the youth shelter workers about and being okay.  Those internet strangers who had saved me the last two times decided that they had to do something or I’d be a perpetual headache for them, constantly needing to be bailed out, and they reached out.  I’d picked up a handful of tricks, how would I like to learn some more?”

“Raymond?” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/02/16/shaking-hands-9-3/ Excerpt] from [[Shaking Hands 9.3]]</ref>

Eventually his father found out about his online activities which lead to a severe argument between the two of them and Zed running away from home.<ref name=":11" />

He continued to look for and find digital others until Raymond decided to initiate him officially into the practice.<ref name=":11" />

He began attending the [[Blue Heron Institute]] in 2017.<ref>“You’ve been coming here a while?” Avery asked.<br><br>“Three years." - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/08/29 Excerpt] from [[Leaving a Mark 4.4]]</ref>

A year and a half ago, he transitioned from Zoe to Zed. Since he transitioned after joining the Practice, some Others and Practitioners would (accidentally or intentionally) use his old name until corrected.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" />