#they are just middle school internet user weird

[hermeysdentalequipment]

Astonished. Shocked. Psychically damaged. In the year of our lord 2024, I walk up to a station at work and see this left by a coworker. I want to commit cringe seppuku.

[pandor-pandorkful]

It's time for another ADHD-fueled ramble! This one is about Homestuck, kind of. Saw a post about someone never reading it in spite of being a tumblr oldie, and that lead to some introspective reminiscing. Maybe it's interesting, maybe it isn't.

I reckon a lot of folks who read Homestuck were kind of peer-pressured into it. I was no exception, though the pressure applied was relatively passive. And if my memory serves me, I started reading Homestuck on MS Paint Adventures before I was a regular tumblr user... sometime in 2011, I think? The year I took off between grad school year 1 and 2, or maybe just slightly before that...

Anyways, around that time I noticed most of my Silent Hill fan art buddies on deviantArt suddenly switched to drawing trolls pretty much non-stop out of the blue.

I felt confused, and kinda left out. I was already feeling like being so overwhelmingly distracted by grad school had permanently damaged my connection to those friends...

So in kind of a last ditch effort to not lose yet another friend group, I dove headfirst into the webcomic, hoping to understand why the steady stream of old man yaoi had been replaced by weird preteen aliens.

If you've read the majority of Homestuck, you know what an effort that was. Its first few chapters are incredibly long and slow paced. By the time I even caught up to the trolls actually being visually introduced, I think my SH-turned-HS friends had moved on to something else entirely. :B

(Later I'd learn that the majority of HS fans during the height of it's popularity were, uh, kinda "fake fans". In that they skipped directly to the troll chapters. :B)

Granted, I had taken the longest possible road to catch up with MS Paint Adventures. When it comes to comics, any comic, I am a completionist. Maybe it's the anxiety from feeling like I'm always missing out on CONTEXT due to ADHD... My brain is broken and I must read everything in chronological release order, so that nothing is missed. (This is a big reason I never got into superhero comics.)

Homestuck was only the current series on MSPA, there were several other completed or abandoned series as well. So I started at what seemed like the very beginning, with Jailbreak. By the time I was done with Problem Sleuth I was very hooked on the throwback to text-based adventure games meets forum shenanigans baked into a comic formula.

Homestuck itself was delightful, from an adventure game mechanics perspective. It had all the frustrating backtracking and plodding story of a classic hardcore adventure, as well as the wild traditional-format-breaking jankiness of the experimental web comics imagined in Scott McCloud's "troubled middle child*," Reinventing Comics. (*as he described the book to me when I asked him to sign my copy lol)

No wonder so many readers skipped straight to the troll chapters! You really had to have a very specific string of incredibly niche, nerdy interests in order to appreciate the slow-burn of the chapters leading up to the trolls... and apparently that's exactly what I had.

Like, to the point that it took me a long ass time to warm up to the trolls at all. Maybe it was because I was an older reader than the typical HS fan and had actually experienced more eras of the internet, but the trolls were just as annoying as the real life types of internet trolls they were based on.

I don't think I started to actually like any of them until the second set of trolls were introduced. The generational conflicts between old-internet and then-current types of trolling was fascinating and honestly hilarious.

By the time I was finally caught up, the comic was close to it's first ending. (And in my opinion, only ending. As I didn't bother checking in with Hussie's later attempts to rekindle the series.)

Having read through everything on MSPA that came before Homestuck, as well as stumbling into Andrew Hussie's even older comics, blog posts and Picard/Riker ST:TNG fan edits on youtube, I had built up maybe an unrealistic hope for the future of MSPA: I was excited for the next comic project to come once Homestuck was finished.

What a big assumption! I don't think anyone would have an easy time just moving on to "the next project" after making something that had garnered as big of a reaction as Homestuck did. So watching Hussie spiral into milking HS for all he could really shouldn't have surprised me.

In an ideal world, artists, writers, creators in general would be able to just move on from project to project. Creation to creation to creation. But we're not machines, and none of us exist in a vacuum. We need to survive somehow, and our feelings of importance and self worth can get so dangerously tangled up with the reaction others have to our work.

Some may find success and never work again. Some may find success and seek to recapture that high for the rest of their life. Some will never find success and give up creating altogether. Who am I to judge or hope for anything from any creator? I'm barely holding on by the whites of my knuckles and the skin of my teeth myself.

But part of me still grieves for the "Next MS Paint Adventures Project" I made up in my head. Something that scratched the itch for interactive comics in new and exciting ways. With brand new characters, settings and bizarre lingo to get used to. There would be references to prior projects, just as HS was peppered with references to Problem Sleuth and the other MSPAs, but on the whole it would be a self-contained work, as it's predecessors were. Another volume for the abstract digital bookshelf.

MS Paint Adventures is dead, the site is just Homestuck now. Flash, the format that made up the very backbone of the comic, is dead and banished. I haven't chatted with most of my old dA buddies in over a decade. We all move on, or don't, in one way or another.

[forestgloss]

I think I've said this before but of all the ways you could choose to criticize Vivziepop, why do people so often come back to just insulting her art style or taste or aesthetic or something? I don't know much about her as an individual but I know a lot of people have some strong and not exactly positive feelings about her. There must be valid reasons for that, so just continue to talk about those things. It's weird to see people, especially on tumblr of all places, insulting her art style or saying Hazbin Hotel looks like something they would've made in middle school, as if that's a bad thing.

This feels like the cringe culture version of that post talking about how if you insult someone's appearance just because you think they're a bad person, there's always gonna be innocent and good people with the same features who you have now indirectly also insulted. idk weird connection but like. Many people would agree with me when I say that I think it's fun to explore nostalgia. It's fun to put out things your child self would've wanted to see. It's gratifying to succesfully create things your teen self tried but struggled to create. It's fulfilling and comforting to look back on things you used to enjoy and invite them back into your life when you realize the only reason you grew out of them was because you were shamed into doing so, despite them being ultimately harmless. That's of course not to say that Vivziepop's work is harmless, again I'm referring more to the aspects of her work that people insult carelessly but maybe would (or imo Should) think twice about if it were anyone else's work.

I don't know if I'm getting my point across here but basically I don't think internet users will ever learn that immaturely insulting someone who is genuinely worthy of criticism only results in their actual misdeeds getting drowned out while innocent bystanders catch strays from your thoughtless mockery.

[xxamacha-tsukixx]

why I joined tumblr (full story)

TW VENT

I had been bullied since a young age when I went to middle school I kinda became mentally insane there when I was there ppl would always bully me cuz of my looks,”weird things” and I do stuff that are “weird to them” I had very few friends and they ended up bullying me physically(mostly mentally tho) (dw they dnt hurt me just push me ,throw things at me and stuff) I never went to a counselor or got mental help because my parents are pretty strict and they get mad at me for the smallest things and ever since I told my parents why _ they would get mad at me which made me not tell them stuff anymore and I matter what I do they always manage to find out (one time when I was 9 I had two friends who were jealous to who which one is my bff and we went to a counselor and stuff and my parents found out and blamed it on me saying I was the one jealous ever since that when I do something “wrong” my parents would always blame me but one day I just had this thought if I became famous maybe people would accept me and why I chose gacha as my passion is because 1. I’m not good at art and I refuse to be one of those cringe kids to make rly cringe vids lol 2. I heard of it when I was 8(cuz of fnaf lol) my parents made leave the internet game I had acces to gacha and stuff when I was 9 but when I got my phone I rediscovered it:D but first I needed ocs after that I kinda just forgot abt that but during winter break I wanted to make art for fun and fame but I’m not good so I tried to do a anime art generator(I didn’t realized it was wrong until the future lol) but then I discovered picrews I did my first one and it was fun I wanted to make my friends as certain characters as human wolves cuz I got interested in wolves lol then I found more picrews so I did the same thing for them lol but then I found out abt this anime dress up game(forgot the name lol) so I did it for them and that’s when I got their names I was going to do fancy words for their colors but I did it but I used it in japanese since I was interested in anime recently now I got my ocs I recreated them in gacha and I made a few vids for fun meanwhile at school the ppl there still bullied me and I was pissed for the last time so I started social media to take another step I didn’t wanted to get payed on YouTube so I didn’t do that for a while so I did Pinterest instead but I couldn’t figure out how to make posts or videos so I tried to find substitutes and turns out tumblr was one of them so quickly created an account and got started one day my friend told the ppl abt my tumblr and they tricked me (I was dumb lol) to asking me my tumblr user and they saw it and they bullied me for being a gacha person since but that didn’t stopped me as I progressed, made recent posts, tried to make my ocs look better, edit better and have good vids and here I am today as I will take my next big step soon

And with the bullying thing I left that school and got a fresh start on a new school it’s only a little bad but the ppl have no idea abt my interest on gacha(except for a few ppl but they support me) but I feel bad for leaving my bff the only one there who loved gacha just as I do but I am mean towards some people there because it’s hard to trust certain people cuz they remind me of my bullies which made me have trust issues

[slimesaurian]

I think one of the best things of tumblr as a mid-late 20 something coming from Twitter is that all its weird little flaws and quirks are so oddly nostalgic.

My early internet exposure was the days when "make a little website then make some songs or a flash game to put on it" was a whole class in middle school. That type of class may exist still but the meta of the internet as a whole has changed from the days of exploring random forums and blogs to learn things or socialize and then focus on your own stuff.

When Facebook shook everything up, the entire internet decided they had to erase their shameful pasts, make everything ad friendly and corporate and pleasant to be on and oh whoops! You just lost your entire user base "somehow"! Twitter at least had its own identity for a good run there, but everyone can see the writing on the wall.

So when I come to Tumblr, the place where you were literally allowed to edit others' posts, the place that corporations are playing hot potato with because it's so unmarketable?

It feels like home.

I can be an idiot tranny dog girl who posts about her dumb microinterests that other people find interesting and they follow me. That's it. No metrics, no view counts, just shitty infrastructure and the freedom to use it (mostly) how you like.

[biwrites]

How's This For An Embarrassing Sexuality Realization Story

Or- "How an IMVU SRP Made Me Realize I was Bisexual"

(tw for some of my extremely irresponsible online behavior when I was a minor. brief mentions of sex and sex toys)

Flashback: it's sometime in the early 2010’s, I’m the token straight friend in my extremely queer middle school friend group. Gender feelings are bouncing around in my head like the DVD logo and just haven’t hit any corners yet. I’ve acknowledged them and promptly ignored them, which will continue until around the age of 17. My best friend has entered yet another extremely expensive video game hyperfixation, and expected the rest of the group to follow suit. First it was the Sims, then gacha rhythm games, and finally IMVU. They had, by this point, sunk hundreds (yes hundreds) of dollars into character cosmetics thanks to their parents, while the rest of the group looked on in awe. Of course, I did what any middle schooler in a deeply unhealthy homoerotic friendship would do and downloaded the stupid game. 

Now if you weren’t a weird little tween at around the same time that I was, you might be wondering what IMVU even is. It’s a social simulator, very similar to what VR chat would become in the future. You would make an avatar, decorate a house, join a room someone has decorated to look like a park or a nightclub, and chat with other users like you were in whatever setting the room portrayed. 

I was very interested in the avatars at the time, since the feminine ones were heavily stylized and very attractive to the emo middle schooler on the other side of the screen…no need to unpack that. It felt scandalous, dressing the virtual manifestation of myself in fishnets and crop tops. Giving them long dyed hair, black lipstick, and dark eyeshadow. I was prepared to slam my laptop closed at the first sign of my bedroom door opening, and I didn’t know why.

Me and my friend played around for a bit, but eventually they got bored, and I decided to go online on my own. Like many young people with unfettered access to the 2010’s internet, I’d found my way into generally more spicy corners of the internet. Because I specifically was, and am, a giant nerd, that meant I naturally found my way into RP communities. So here I am, staying home from church on a Sunday evening due to a freak muscle spasm, anxiously typing “S.R.P” into the IMVU search bar. After a few failed attempts, I struck up conversation with a girl sporting a preppy female avatar. At this point, I was tired, I was bored, and I was determined to make this work somehow; so when she asked if I wanted to move to dm’s, the implications of imagining sex with a woman was the furthest concern from my mind. I told myself that it didn’t matter, that this was probably a random guy getting his rocks off anyways, that because it was online, it didn’t mean anything about me. 

Boys, I had a revelation. 

What came of this was two girls who knew jack shit about sex trying to figure out how to write a sex scene, it wasn’t hot, we were middle schoolers in places we shouldn’t have been. I didn’t know what a dildo even was. I had to ask for a definition. 

I thought about it for the rest of the night. 

At first I considered it might just be the embarrassment that I had such a monumental writing fuckup (I mean GOD who doesn’t know what a dildo is.), but I wasn’t shameful, I wasn’t kicking myself. I just kept turning it over and over in my head. When the revelation came, it wasn’t monumental, my heart didn’t plummet to the bottom of my stomach, I didn’t fear for my eternal soul (the religious trauma would poke its head up years later), I didn’t cry, I didn’t cheer. I simply sat back in my chair, shut my laptop screen, and thought,

“Huh��do I like girls?”

I knew the word bisexual, my friends were all queer, I wrote fanfiction as a hobby and had a very active Wattpad account thank you very much. This wasn’t a new concept, but it was never a possibility for me. Somehow, I never considered that I could even feel that way about a woman, but the desire fit like a glove when I gave it a name. 

Honestly, part of me wishes I could tell you I was so conflicted there in the moment, that I sobbed, that I clawed through all of my internalized homophobia and biphobia early, that I fought as a child to accept myself as an adult, give you some emotional catharsis, but I didn’t. Truthfully, late at night, lit in a warm glow by the little pink lamp on my desk, I came out to myself silently. 

“I guess I’m bisexual.” 

I still remember the exact thought. 

I would proceed to deal with years of internalized and external biphobia, years of unpacking my compulsory heterosexuality, years of wrestling with religious trauma in the light of my self discovery…

But

At that moment, in the quiet of the night, I was happy, I was unconflicted, I was bisexual, and for a brief, beautiful moment, that felt like home.

[a-method-in-it]

Girl what the hell is that last post you just reblogged.

(((They))) leave out or what.

Have you considered that you just did not pay that much attention during history class, because I learned about many of these things.

Jesus Christ half of that Tweet chain is just antisemtic conspiracy theories with 'zionists' instead of jews, as if that's not something the alt-right has started doing years ago.

Calling jewish people 'white' as if that's what the perception was at the time or makes any sense considering Jewishness is an ethnicity.

Fucking hell. You seemed like a reasonable person for a long time yk. But a claim that the goddamn Holocaust wasn't explicity and overwhelmingly targeting Jews with most others as afterthoughts is insane and history denying.

Literal textbook antisemitism.

Hi --- From the sound of this ask, you're someone who follows me, and as such I wish you hadn't sent this on anon so that I could reply privately, but here goes.

I assume you are talking about this post? That's the closest thing that I can find in my reblogs to what you're describing, though a lot of what you say about it here isn't actually true.

The post does not call Jewish people white --- it says that the way the Holocaust is presented in mainstream education seems designed to portray Jews as perfect white victims who didn't even fight back, which is obviously not true. (The fact that it's not true, including the white part, is what the Twitter user is pointing out.)

It also never claims that the Holocaust was not overwhelmingly targeting Jews, and I honestly don't know where you got that.

Also, I can't speak to where you went to school, but as a middle class white American, I actually was not taught anything in school about the Herero and Nama genocide, the presence of armed Jewish resistance to the Nazis, the fact that Hitler was inspired by the Armenian genocide, and certainly not that he was inspired by the genocide of indigenous peoples in the United States. (I did in high school learn that the Red Army liberated the camps and that people other than Jews were targeted as well, including Romani and disabled people; I have, however, had friends who were surprised to learn this as adults.)

You seem to think this post was criticizing the way that Jewish people talk about the Holocaust, but unless you think that Jewish people are in charge of all education policy (which would be a weird thing to think?) I don't see how you're getting that at all. The post specifies it's about Holocaust education, which I read as the things people are taught in school.

For what it's worth, I have found that Jewish sources of information about the Holocaust are actually less likely to fall into these traps than mainstream American ones, just speaking from my own experience.

I will say I'm not thrilled with the way the Twitter user makes the leap to saying that this type of education is deliberately meant to further zionism. I think that's a stretch. I reblogged it anyway because I thought it was overall making good points. I might wind up deleting it; I certainly take it seriously when something reads to Jewish people as engaging in anti-Semitic tropes, and if you have more to say about why you think this does that, I truly am happy to listen. I don't really see it that way, but as a goy, I often miss things.

But yeah. I feel like this would have been a better convo to have non-publicly, and I wish you hadn't chosen to go the anonymous route. I don't know what to make of statements like "You seemed like a reasonable person for a long time yk." coming from an anonymous ask. Are we mutuals? Have we interacted? Or are you basing this assessment purely on my online presence? Are you treating me like some quasi-public figure because I *checks notes* have a pseudonymous account on the internet's least popular social media site or have I offended someone I know and have some online relationship with?

If you want to send a chat or an ask I can answer privately, I'm happy to keep talking, but if you send another anonymous message, I will not be replying.

[silvaurum]

it's funny, i was thinking the other day how weird it is that middle school was 20 years ago for me, that sounds fake even though i Am 30, and middle school 5th grade would have been 20 years ago exactly. it's just not a time scale i'm used to! it's interesting.

and going to college late makes it more so. esp because the public schools in my area have a program for high school students to take some free college courses, so sometimes i hear from teens in my online classes. i'm sure i've talked about stuff like "omg i had to explain to my 18 year old coworker what dial up internet is that's so weird!"

but nothing. nothing could have prepared me for what i've just read. this... growth of technology is unfathomable to me. "our computers growing up had dial up if anything"the internet" was not for the mainstream middle class until the early 2000s, iirc. our windows 98 computers were used for games on cd-rom almost exclusively, maybe aol off a cd as i got older. i think we got our first home computer in 2004, so middle school, and it was so i could use a word processor to type my essays instead of hand-writing them.

you cannot, i tell you, imagine my feelings upon reading a sentence such as this:

"I have been doing online school since I was in 3rd grade,"

i think to myself, 'this cannot be right. i know they had online school before 2020. but 3rd grade? this kid was online in 3rd grade? not just online but doing SCHOOL? what grade is he now?? he can't be a senior, he must still be younger than that. what, 10th grade or something? even then...'

well, 7 years ago is 2016. if he's in 10th grade, he could very much have done 3rd grade online in 2016.

fear. fear stikes deep in my heart at this. even if he is a senior, online school existed in 2014. it wasn't common, but it was something i considered in 2010 and onwards. so.

so.

i am left aware of a gap, a dazzling and terrifying gap between me and the people born just a decade after me. i grew up without internet. offline. utterly. it existed, sure, but that was for people who could afford it and what was the point? what was on the computer that could be that cool? of course i was envious. and i still explored the transitioning 2.0 web of young social media.

they... were born into it. their baby pictures aren't all in an album in someone's basement, they're on fb and google and. they never had... the option to ignore it. the adverts. the infinite loops. the rabbit holes. they never lived in a world where that "internet stuff" was new and a little weird to care so much about. the assumption of sharing anything digitally is baked in. the assumption that online means infinite user-generated content.

i don't think... i don't necessarily think online is bad, edison was a witch, technology phones eat brains bah humbug. it's. just very. humbling, i guess, to realize how vastly different my experiences are from theirs and. to have the perspective of having lived a little in the before world, and lived in the transitions. and. to realize that i am... still growing and aging and new people, entirely new people, are growing and learning and, in a way, in my place. in terms of not knowing the histories and the social norms that have changed. and that i only know how little i know! and... that i can only image how overconfident i was as a kid in how much i knew, and yet... i was sure of those assumptions because everything changed so fast and i hadn't seen firsthand how different things could be from one decade to another.

and the concept of 'one decade to another' is... another thing that only beings to have a sense-making context now. some things, patterns, are only... not only, but easier to see, by far, from that point of view.

when i was a kid i remember every day feeling like it's own chapter. a week was forever, so many things could happen! and i was right, and i was able to notice all those things because each one of them was a first, was The Most Important Social Thing to happen for me! at that point in my life, those very small friendships were the most intense personal relationships with chosen people i'd ever had.

now whole months go by. things happen. i notice them, somewhat, but differently. so and so is doing that again. this person is going through that thing, but i dealt with that myself oh years back, so i know how it is. awesome new milestone! i have a lot more progress to look back on, so i'm able to see it in context. it's... i guess i'd be lying to say it didn't seem a little less exciting, but it's also... i'm able to enjoy it more. i feel less like a fake. it's not a fluke, it's the 20th milestone, there must be something to this. it's a little more intrinsically rewarding, and i can pat myself on the back more and mean it. but it is... less exciting, for that reason. i don't feel like i'm getting away with something, as much, any more.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

I’ve talked to a lot, due to just existing online and also trying to get the word out about internet safety.

PSA

if you see a kid under the age of 15 using the chat features remind them and teach them internet safety because they 200% don’t know it, the schools don’t teach it in like a majority of them, parents are too absentee to tell them. And so it’s up to us to teach them or they’ll get hurt. Please give them a basic lesson and understanding of internet safety. we online natives have to past on our lessons or they will get so hurt.

anyway as I was saying, I’ve talked to alot. We have the cusper zalpha’s (2008-2012) who are like 14-8 years old respectively and they are like “we are worried about the rest of us”

just like how cusper millianials and z gen are like “what the hell is happening” with their respective generations.

the gen alpha experience is very interesting because even the kids born in the late 2000s and early 2010s don’t have the same life experiences as those born mid 2000s and late 1990s.

I unironically fall in the middle of it all, I’m not old nor am i young.

I remember a world without modern social media, and I grew up in a world where it was becoming mainstream. I didn’t use AOL or newgrounds but I was a early user of YouTube.

like I relate more to gen alpha’s life experience, because I didn’t have dial up nor geocities, I didn’t play club penguin or WOW I just was in a world changing so fast by the year that when I think back to when I was little it’s like a fucking culture shock.

my siblings are all gen alpha and cuspers, and it’s so fucking weird.

it depends on what sorta kid you know, because my siblings, other gen alpha kids and such are actually not attracted to social media as much because they know it’s dangerous and addictive so they moderate themselves better or only look at educational content.

like physics, geology, chemistry, all that stuff!

but iPad kids are a completely different phenomenon, they literally stem as you were saying from bad parenting! They shove the iPads in their face to pacify them and leave them to their own devices!

and these kids are sponges, they soak up any ounce of emotional comfort because they aren’t getting it at home. Let it be physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, or psychological abuse. They literally have nowhere to turn and their parents usually suck ass and are neglectful.

it’s not new or anything, I think we are just having a rise of child neglect and emotional abuse.

because if you like take chart of emotional neglect and abuse traits you will tick them all off when you meet an iPad kid.

but also kids who use iPads =/= iPad kid

(kids who use iPads do not equal iPad kids)

kinda important tbh, because iPad kids are

withdrawn

scared of new things

can’t handle being without an iPad due to emotional stress

usually react to stuff they should know with amazement and confusion (like using a fork to eat food, or saying thank you when someone gives you something, not knowing where food comes from or how composite words work. Like pineapple or upside-down),

have unhealthy coping mechanisms and suicidal ideation they may selfharm, starve, or neglect their needs. (no this is real there’s a lot of suicidal 10yr olds genuinely)

have bad experiences online due to being groomed, exploited or bullied.

have knowledge of things they shouldn’t at their age like sexual abuse, sex, and other stuff.

have dysfunctional relationships or family problems

have outside stressors like an alcoholic parent, someone who sexually abuses them, neglected needs, health problems, discrimination against them, and more.

may react with anger and vitriol due to regurgitating things they heard from their family and online.

have bigoted behaviour and beliefs while also being literally 10

be angry and unkind towards anyone that comes near them due to past experiences or actions against them

and more.

which are like emotional abuse and neglect signs, more than half of these are signs that something is wrong at home or in their life.

normal kids don’t do that, they get out of their need to rely on an iPad for emotional support. At like age 4-7 or never have an addiction in the first place!

and your so right that millennial parents just can’t handle their kids so they give them an iPad and call it a day, and send their kids to school for the teachers to parent.

like I’ve seen it all too often! Hell a vast majority of gen z parents would die before they hurt their kid or neglect them. Because they know how that turned out.

like it’s always the milianal parents (no offence btw) who are very negligent and proud of that fact, and some of them are down right abusive! I’ve literally seen people verbally, physically and emotionally abusing children in public so it’s just upsetting.

little kids crying or screaming because they are emotionally unregulated and need comfort from their parents and or an explanation on what’s happening, getting no comfort and screaming their eyes out because they aren’t being comforted! Sometimes parents just neglect their needs because they are screaming, I’ve seen parents have their little kids like toddlers and babies in prams with no shade. I’ve seen parents who yank their kids around or don’t hold their hands when near the road and almost get run over.

I’ve seen ALOT it’s gotten really common to just neglect the needs of your kid to not comfort them when they are scared or emotionally unregulated, when they are hurt or upset or stressed or hungry.

so they give them an iPad to shut them up, and that’s that!

it’s just so sad and they don’t deserve any of the suffering they go through.

you can literally look up 1960s videos about babies who have been emotionally and physically neglected and you can see that is exactly what’s happening with iPad kids.

I don’t blame them, I don’t think they are bad. When the iPad kid gets older they realise they have been through some rough stuff and are hurt.

and they still don’t get help or support, idk.

there needs to be more awareness about child abuse and neglect that isn’t just physical, because it still fucks them SUPER up.

i just watched this and it feels so surreal to me as a 2002 gen z baby

i’m a single child so i dont have any gen alphas in my life to observe for myself. in my mind gen alphas still feel like hypothetical babies but they’re like 13 now at the oldest, starting to have their own impacts on the world in early childhood/teenhood. so it’s quite surreal. the part in this video about gen z—my generation—being the last generation to have relatively normal childhoods. because the development of technological norms and online spaces becoming more involved in mainstream global affairs has been exponential. and then fucking . covid during crucial developmental periods of childhood mentally and socially. seeing the comments section is just harrowing, i dunno

i just wanted to have a discussion about gen alpha. watch this video, read some of the comments, share some thoughts

[icecreamscoup]

this is a head’s up i guess for some people in this tag?

i recommend blocking the user @/butchinit if you actively post about byler and/or not liking m*lkvan

this person has me blocked for defending byler so i can’t see their blog. they like to reblog my posts with arguments sometimes though and i still get notifications when they reblog my posts so i see the tags they use.

i got a notif a day or so ago on a post i made three weeks ago about something they posted that i thought was kind of wack, to which they reblogged “why are you so obsessed with me kiddo?” and used the “stay off my blog” line, as if i am even able to view their blog anymore.

how am i supposed to be obsessed with this user whose blog i cannot view. they are accusing me of obsession on the grounds of a stupid post i made a while ago (with no tags other than my personal one) that they found this week? which brings me to no other conclusion but that they were just going through my blog and on there long enough to scroll down to three weeks ago, and i post a decent amount. i wasnt gonna post anything about that because it was just a “oh yikes this is weird” moment for me. i didnt think posting about someone digging through my blog to accuse me of being obsessed would really be worth it, because honestly, who cares? it’s the internet and people are weird, so i went on with my day. then today i got this:

this user reblogged my post and called me fucking dumb- which is just, yeah okay i’ve been to middle school before, i’ll endure it lmao. then proceeded to tag “byler children are weirdos” as they are lurking on my blog. it’s obviously not a huge deal or anything but it’s just sort of an uncomfortable situation to be in so i thought i’d share my experience. idk if this user has been an issue for anyone else but stay safe out there besties!!

[comrade-meow]

Why a hand gesture has South Korean companies on edge 👌

It took three years for players to notice the "offensive" hand gesture lurking in one of South Korea's most popular multiplayer games.

When players made their avatars laugh, talk or give the "OK" sign in "Lost Ark," they clicked an icon featuring a gesture that might have appeared benign to many: an index finger nearly touching a thumb.

But some of "Lost Ark's" users began claiming in August that the gesture was a sexist insult against men, and they demanded its removal.

What happened next underscores a trend in South Korea among anti-feminists, who have been increasingly pushing companies to repent for what they see as a conspiracy within the government and private companies to promote a feminist agenda.

Smilegate — the creator of "Lost Ark" and one of South Korea's biggest video game developers — quickly complied with the requests for removal. The company removed the icon from the game, and vowed to be more vigilant about policing "game-unrelated controversies" in their products.

A gender war has been unfolding in South Korea for years, pitting feminists against angry young men who feel they're being left behind as the country seeks to address gender inequality. 

Now, though, the latest development in this war is reaching a fever pitch. Since May, more than 20 brands and government organizations have removed what some see as feminist symbols from their products, after mounting pressure. At least 12 of those brands or organizations have issued an apology to placate male customers.

Anti-feminism has a years-long history in South Korea, and research suggests that such sentiments are taking hold among the country's young men. In May, the Korean marketing and research firm Hankook Research said it found that more than 77% of men in their twenties and more than 73% of men in their 30s were "repulsed by feminists or feminism," according to a survey. (The firm surveyed 3,000 adults, half of whom were men.)

The fact that corporations are responding to pressure to modify their products suggests that these anti-feminists are gaining influence in a country that is already struggling with gender issues. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that South Korea has by far the largest gender wage gap among OECD countries. And roughly 5% of board members at publicly listed companies in the country are women compared to the OECD average of nearly 27%.

A suspicious sausage

The online firestorm that has spread across South Korea's corporate landscape kicked off in May with a simple camping advertisement.

GS25, one of the country's biggest convenience store chains, released an ad that month enticing customers to order camping food on their app, promising free items as a reward. The ad showed an index finger and a thumb appearing to pinch a sausage. The finger-pinching motif is frequently used in advertising as a way to hold an item without obscuring the product.

Critics, though, saw something different in that hand signal. They accused it of being a code for feminist sympathies, tracing the use of the finger-pinching motif to 2015, when the symbol was co-opted by Megalia, a now-defunct feminist online community, to ridicule the size of Korean men's genitals.

Megalia has since shut down, but its logo has outlived the group. Now anti-feminists are trying to purge South Korea of its existence.

Source: Megalia, @starbucksrtd/Instagram, @gs25_official/Instagram

GS25 removed the hand symbol from the poster. But critics still weren't satisfied, and began trawling the advertisement for other feminist clues. One person pointed out that the last letter of each word featured on the poster — "Emotional Camping Must-have Item" — spelled "Megal," a shorthand for "Megalia," when read backward.

GS25 removed the text from the poster, but that still wasn't enough. People theorized that even the moon in the background of the poster was a feminist symbol, because a moon is used as the logo of a feminist scholar organization in South Korea.

After revising the poster multiple times, GS eventually pulled it entirely, just a day after the campaign launched. The company apologized and promised a better editorial process. It also said it reprimanded the staff responsible for the ad, and removed the marketing team leader.

The online mob had tasted success, and it wanted more.

Other companies and government organizations soon became targets. The online fashion retailer Musinsa was criticized for offering women-only discounts, as well as using the finger-pinching motif in an ad for a credit card. The company defended the use of that motif as a neutral element regularly used in advertising, and said its discount program was meant to help expand its small female customer base. Still, founder and CEO Cho Man-ho stepped down after the backlash.

South Korean demonstrators hold banners during a rally to mark International Women's Day as part of the country's #MeToo movement in Seoul on March 8, 2018. Dongsuh, the Korean company that licenses a Starbucks ready-to-drink line in the country, was attacked in July after one of its Korean Instagram accounts published an image of fingers pinching a can of coffee. The company pulled the ad and apologized, saying that it "considers these matters seriously." The firm also said the image had no hidden intent.

Even local governments have been caught up in the pressure campaign. The Pyeongtaek city government was criticized in August after uploading an image to its Instagram account that warned residents of a heatwave. It used an illustration of a farmer wiping his forehead — and critics noticed that the farmer's hand was shaped similarly to the finger pinch.

"How deeply did [feminists] infiltrate?" one person wrote on MLB Park, an internet forum used primarily by men. Another person shared contact information for the city government, encouraging people to flood their channels with complaints. The image was later removed from the Instagram account.

Gender wars

At the core of the anti-feminist campaign is a widespread fear among young men that they are falling behind their female peers, according to Professor Park Ju-yeon, professor of sociology at Yonsei University.

The sentiment has grown because of a hyper competitive job market and skyrocketing housing prices. The government has also rolled out programs in recent years to bring more women into the workforce. Proponents of those programs have said they're necessary for closing gender gaps, but some men have worried they give women an unfair advantage.

Another compounding factor: Unlike women, men in South Korea have to complete up to 21 months of military service before they're 28 years old — a sore point for some men who feel unfairly burdened.

Anti-feminists have also taken umbrage with President Moon Jae-in, who, when elected in 2017, promised to be a "feminist president." Moon pledged to fix the systemic and cultural barriers that prevented women from participating more in the workforce. He also vowed to address sexual crimes in the wake of the global #MeToo movement.

This year's corporate pressure campaign adds another complication, as brands weigh the possible fallout.

Young men are "big spenders," said Professor Choi Jae-seob, a marketing professor at Namseoul University in Seoul. He added that many young people today are driven by personal political values when they buy things.

Ha, a 23-year-old university student, said he pays attention to what companies say about gender issues before making a purchase.

"Between two stores, I would use the one that doesn't support [feminism]," said Ha, who declined to give his full name because he said that gender is a thorny topic among his peers.

Ha said he's far from alone. When his friends were discussing the GS25 camping poster, for example, he was surprised to find that many of them felt the way he did: "I realized that many men were silently seething."

"I realized that many men were silently seething."Ha, a 23-year-old university student

The gender war leaves companies in a tough spot, according to Noh Yeong-woo, a consultant at the public relations agency PR One.

By not responding to allegations that they are taking a stance on gender issues, that could lead to what Noh called a "constant barrage of accusation" and the creation of a stigma. It also means that companies are actively monitoring online groups and studying what their users have designated as hidden codes or associations, to avoid being called out.

"They are continuously checking for the next problematic symbols," Noh said of brands in South Korea.

Stigmas and fighting back

Some women, though, say that the corporate apologies are also creating a climate where some people are afraid to identify as feminist.

"It's the new Red Scare. Like McCarthyism," said Yonsei University's Park, referring to the mass hysteria to root out communists in the United States in the 1950s.

Lee Ye-rin, a college student, said she has been a feminist since middle school. But in recent years she has found it impossible to be open about her stance.

"It's the new Red Scare. Like McCarthyism."Professor Park Ju-yeon, professor of sociology at Yonsei University

She recalled an incident in high school, when some boys openly heckled a feminist friend of hers while that friend was giving a class presentation on the depiction of women in the media. Lee and her classmates were too scared to defend the friend.

"We all knew that a person who would step up and say that feminism is not some weird thing would be stigmatized, too," Lee said.

In response to this year's anti-feminist pressure campaigns, though, some feminists have been fighting back. The apology over the camping poster from GS25, for example, prompted feminists to call for boycotts against the company. Some people shared images online of themselves shopping at rival stores, using hashtags that called on people to avoid shopping at GS25.

Balancing act

As there doesn't seem to be much hope of finding middle ground for those waging South Korea's gender war, experts say companies have to figure out ways to avoid being dragged into a brand-damaging fight.

Noh, from PR One, encouraged companies and organizations to educate their employees on gender sensitivity — and even reconsider the use of symbols that have become heavily politicized.

Finger-pinching motifs "are images with complex metaphors and symbols and they already carry a social stigma," he said. "So, once you get involved in it, it's hard to explain them away ... the issue keeps spreading until they are removed as demanded."

Park, the Yonsei University professor, said that part of the problem is that many South Korean companies are led by older men who don't have a firm grasp of present-day gender issues. The average age of an executive-level employee at the country's top 30 publicly traded companies is 53, according to a 2020 analysis by JobKorea, a Korean version of LinkedIn.

That suggests a level of irony. Maybe it's not that some of these companies have a specific agenda, as online critics are accusing them. Perhaps for some of them, high levels of leadership are just not in tune with the debate.

To Park, the vitriol directed at companies has also buried some of the underlying, systemic issues that contribute to gender inequality, along with debates about how best to crack the glass ceiling or address the division of labor at home, among other concerns.

"Some very important debates are being buried," Park said, adding that today's gender war is being fought on the tip of the "iceberg." "It's not a fight about the fingers."

[opens-up-4-nobody]

congrats!!! i know i am just a stranger on the internet to u, but i have been following your account since middle school and now i’m a sophomore in college. it’s been so cool to see your art style change and basically grow up alongside your account. i remember before i had a sense of “Oh This Tumblr User Is A Real Person” in middle school i would submit an art request every couple days when u were doing yogscast art reqs and i’d come home from school and be SO excited to see if you did my request. anyway that was a lot of rambling but basically CONGRATS !!!

Awe thanks! i made this account just after I graduated high school and I'm a completely different person to when I started. It's so weird, so much has changed

[kwamihitman]

Oops lemme make a quick addendum because this needs more context. TL;DR at the bottom. Gets a little NSFW near the middle.

First off I'm not anti-kink, nsfw art, or R34 as a whole. I do personally find Totally Spies lewds a little strange, because 1) I love the show and 2) the girls are minors in high school for most of it's duration. But here is were I'm coming from.

The thing about Totally Spies discourse on the internet is that, unlike other animated shows who's discourse mostly surrounds the art direction of the show, relationships between characters, or elements of the plot, mainstream Totally Spies discourse is often inundated by discussion surrounding the supposed secret fetishes imbedded in the series by the writers and animators throughout the years. A popular topic of Totally Spies tweets or YouTube commentary videos in the 2010s surrounded the perception that cartoony elements of the show, such as the girls wearing latex spy suits, or being captured/tied up, was purposeful fetish fuel meant to do anything from give the parents something fun to watch too, or pass on certain fetishes or kinks to the minors watching.

Its true that a lot of weird stuff happens in Totally Spies; its a cartoon. Its also true that animators or showrunners can hide innuendos or references inside shows that younger audiences may not get instantly, or that are intended for older audiences. Furthermore, some showrunners are largely known to be creeps or abuse their creative or executive privileges to make certain references for whatever reason (See: Dan Schneider's history at Nickelodeon.)

But for a show that hits some pretty specific personal interests of stylish girls with nice dialogue who also fight crime, I find that there is an uncomfortable amount of horny-posting regarding Totally Spies that washes out what little, mundane content it's small fandom generates on a regular basis. As someone who grew up on the show, it's frustrating to constantly be running into overblown pearl-clutching and common cartoon tropes being painted as blatant fetish fuel. Like yeah, you could watch TS and decide there are some overlaps with whatever fetishes you've seen online. That's because you spend too much time on Twitter.

I specifically (and maybe incorrectly) outlined straight guys as my issue in the post because, truthfully, I rarely see female-presenting internet users unironically agree the show is fetish fuel, or make posts like "I was a straight guy who secretly watched Totally Spies and it gave me a bunch of fetishes lol hur dur". Like congrats. It was for everyone. There were tons of little girls and gay boys who watched the show for the fashion or the action, grew up, and decided to appreciate the show for the aforementioned fashion and action without feeling the need to reference horny-internet headcannons about what the show was. This shit aired on Teletoon you guys.

If I may get more personal (and I will, because it's my blog, and the generalizations will continue until moral improves), I've always thought that cartoons and girly media should be for everyone, the same way boyish media should be for everyone. But coming from an era where Bronies were cumming on Rainbow Dash figurines and storing them in jars, and living presently in an era where Barbie plastic boob jokes are made at the Golden Globes, I don't like living in a world where men will either claim your media is misandrist or fill your subreddits with porn.

Which brings us back to the original post. I made this post because r/TotallySpies is recently having to clean up its subreddit because of a massive influx of Rule 34 posting, despite the fact that a subreddit with nearly 10 times! the amount of members exists just four letters away, yet we're having to argue with horny-posters on there about their right to post porn wherever they want. NSFW posts aren't even permitted on the main subreddit, yet the show has a massive online reputation for being fetish fuel.

I made the post because I find it strange that the supposed straight guys that grew up watching the show in secret and loving it, grew up and want to talk about how horny Sam makes them. Well, at the same time, the girls and the gays make fanart and appreciative TikTok slideshows. It’s strange! I appreciate the odd vidoe essay, but I am not trying to take the bad with the good. 

I don't care if you want to jack off to cartoons. I have no interest in debating the morality of making NSFW art of underage characters. But I wish people would leave us alone about it. If your local prosecutors aren’t gonna lock you up for jacking off to Totally Spies porn then go for it. I would never advocate for the subreddit to be shut down. But you want to get off. We want to discuss the magic of friendship. We are not the same, and we cannot afford the spillover.

TL;DR: I was off-base making it a straight guy thing, but the massive amounts of girly cartoon horny-posting disrupts online communities' experiences and is overall super annoying. Sometimes the girls and the gays get so little that we gotta draw some lines and take some stances.

If you guys don’t know what I mean when I say I hate straight men who watch girly cartoons, look at the difference in subscribers.

[shirlleycoyle]

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon

Every fictional character you can think of has experienced 9/11 in fanfiction.

A Clone Wars veteran with two lightsabers is on United Airlines Flight 93 and prevents it from crashing. Ron and Hermione get caught up in the chaos as the towers fall. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her friends watch the attacks unfold on TV from Sunnydale. We have spent 20 years trying to process what happened on 9/11 and its fallout, and that messy process can be tracked through the countless, sad, disturbing, and sometimes very funny fanfiction left across the internet.

Many of the fanfics written in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks seemed to directly respond to the news as it happened, processing the tragedy in real-time through the eyes of characters they loved. In the absence of a canon episode where Daria Morgendorffer paid respects to those lost, writing fanfic about these characters also experiencing trauma helped fans cope.

One YuGiOh fanfic published on fanfiction.net in May 2002 could have been ripped exactly from what this writer experienced that Tuesday morning. “It started as a normal day,” user Gijinka Renamon wrote. Yugi and his friends were in school, where their teacher informed them of the attacks and sent everyone home from school.

“After reading people’s 9/11 fics, I decided to write my own, and put a certain character in it. And Yugi and his pals were my first choice,” the author's note reads, explaining the connection they felt to United flight 93 and the World Trade Center attacks. Given that they lived in Pennsylvania, and “it’s close to New York, I felt really sad about it.”

Stitch, a fandom journalist for Teen Vogue, told Motherboard that this reaction to 9/11 is not at all uncommon in fandom.

"Fandom has always been a place that positions nothing as 'off limits,'" she said. "Historical tragedies like the Titanic sinking and atrocities like… all of World War 2 show up regularly across the past 30 years of people creating stories and art about the characters they love. So, on some level, it makes sense that 9/11 and the following 20-year military installation in the Middle East has joined the ranks of things people in different fandoms turn into settings for their fan fiction."

Reactions depicted in a handful of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfics published in the weeks after the attacks ring a little truer to the characters. “Tuesday, 11th September 2001,” written by Anna K, almost echoes the lyrics from “I’ve Got a Theory,” one of the songs in the musical episode that aired in November 2001. “We have seen the apocalypse. We have prevented it. Actually, we’ve prevented quite a few. So we know what they look like,” they write, before taking a darker turn. “They look a lot like…New York today.”

Killing demons and vampires doesn’t phase the Scooby Gang, but when preventable human death is brought into the picture, it’s gut wrenching.

“What am I supposed to do…When I can’t do anything to save the world?” Buffy cries  into Spike’s chest, watching the attacks unfold on TV in a fanfic the author described as being “about feeling numb and helpless.”

In “Blood Drive,” Kirayoshi writes about Buffy and her friends saving a van full of donated blood meant for victims of the attacks from a group of thirsty vampires. One Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic even takes a blindly patriotic turn, where noted lesbian witch Tara McClay helps Xander hang an American flag from the window of the magic shop to make Anya feel better.

Experiencing 9/11 as a young teenager was overwhelming not just because of the loss of life. Almost immediately after the event itself, it was as if the entirety of American culture re-oriented itself towards an overtly jingoistic stance. As we get distance from the attacks, seeing the tone of television and movies from the early 2000s is jarring, and some have gone viral on Twitter. In the world of pop music, mainstream musicians like the Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, were blacklisted from the radio while Toby Keith sang about putting a boot up the ass of terrorists. On the Disney Channel, a young Shia Labeouf reading a poem he supposedly wrote about the events. The poem concludes with the line, "it's awesome to be an American citizen."

In a world so completely saturated with this messaging, it is not surprising that fanfic authors started including 9/11 in their work so soon after the event. Even The West Wing had a strange, out of continuity, fanfic-esque episode where the characters reacted to 9/11. In some cases, it made sense that the characters in the stories would be close to or a part of the events themselves.

"For characters like John Watson or Captain America, the idea works to an extent," Stitch told Motherboard. "In the original Sherlock Holmes works and the 2011 BBC series, Watson had just returned from Afghanistan. For Captain America and other Marvel heroes, 9/11 was something that was addressed in-universe in The Amazing Spider-Man volume 2 #36. Technically, 9/11 is 'canon' to the Marvel universe."

In “Early Warning: Terrorism,” a fanfiction for the TV show Early Edition in which a man who mysteriously receives tomorrow's newspaper, predicting the future, avoids jingoism, but tries to precent 9/11 from happening. This fanfic remains unfinished; it’s unclear if the characters successfully prevent 9/11 in this retelling.

Largely in fanfic from the era just after 9/11, when many young authors were trying to emotionally grapple with it, the characters don't re-write or undo the events themselves. It's this emphasis on the reaction to tragedy that colors the fanfiction that features 9/11 going forward.

Although fanfiction authors have been writing about 9/11 consistently since soon after the event, whenever that fanfiction reaches outside of its intended audience, it looks bizarre.

A screenshot of a Naruto 9/11 fanfic on the Tumblr subreddit comes without any context, or even more than two lines and an author's note. It’s impossible to suss out if this falls into the category of sincere fanfic without the rest of the piece or a publication date, but modern-day commenters on the Reddit thread see it as classic Tumblr trash.

Screenshot from r/Tumblr

“Bin Laden/Dick Cheney, enemies to lovers, 10k words, slow burn,” one user joked in the replies, underscoring the weirdness of Naruto being in the Twin Towers by comparing it to a What If story about Cheney and Bin Laden slowly falling deeply in love.

It’s hard to tell how much of the 9/11 fanfic and fanart starting a few years after the attacks is sincere, and how much of it is ironic, and trying to make fun of the very concept of writing fanfiction about 9/11.

A 2007 anime music video (in which various clips, usually from anime, are cut together to music) that combines scenes from The Lion King with Linkin Park’s “Crawling” and clips from George Bush’s speeches immediately after the attacks feels like the perfect example of this. Even the commenters can’t seem to suss out if this person is a troll or not.

There’s no way that My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic 9/11 fanart could be serious, right? Especially if the description pays tribute to “some of the nation's most memorable buildings,” and features five of the main characters as child versions of themselves. The comments again are split between users thanking the artist for a thoughtful remembrance post, and people making their own headcanon for why Twilight Sparkle is surreptitiously absent from the scene.

Screengrab via DeviantArt

There’s Phineas and Ferb fanfic that combines a 9/11 tribute concert with flashbacks to Ferb being rescued from the towers as a baby, written on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It jumps from introspection to lines like, “‘Quiet Perry the Platypus. I’m trying to listen to these kids singing a 9/11 tribute.’”

The author's notes make it more likely that they meant for this to be a tribute piece, but it doesn’t quite make sense until watching a YouTube dramatic reading of it from 2020, fully embracing the absurdity of it all.

“For me, 9/11 is synonymous with war. It completely changed the course of my life," Dreadnought, the author of a Captain America fanfic Baghdad Waltz that sees Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes fall in love over the course of the war on terror, told Motherboard. "It’s the reason I joined the military, and I developed deep connections with people who would go on to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. These very much felt like my generation’s wars, perhaps because people I graduated high school with were the youngest folks eligible to serve at the time.”

Dreadnought told Motherboard that although they didn't deploy, their career has kept 9/11 and the trauma from it in their mind. After seeing that people who fantasize about Steve and Bucky getting together seemed particularly interested in reading fanfiction that related to 9/11, they decided to try their hand at it.

"I had to do something with all of that emotionally, and I’m admittedly a bit emotionally avoidant. So I learned through fic that it’s easier for me to process those feelings and the knowledge of all the awful stuff that can happen in war if I can turn it into something creative," Dreadnought said. "Give the feelings to fake people and then have those fake people give the feelings to readers!"

To Dreadnought, who is a queer man, the experience of researching and writing this was more cathartic than they first expected, especially as a way to navigate feelings about masculinity, military culture, and queer identity. But they said the research they did, which included watching footage of first responders at ground zero, was what helped them finally process the event itself.

"It was like a delayed horror, and it was more powerful than I expected it would be." Dreadnought said. "When I was eighteen, I was pretty emotionally divorced from 9/11; I just knew I wanted to do something about it. So coming back to it in my 30s while writing this fic, it was a very different experience. Even the research for this story ended up being an extraordinarily valuable exercise in cognitively and emotionally processing 9/11 and all of its second and third order effects."

Fanfiction that features 9/11 provides an outlet for people who still grapple with the trauma from that day. But Stitch warns that the dynamics of fandom and how it relates to politics can also create fiction that's less respectful and more grotesque.

"With years of distance between the stories written and the original events of 9/11, there seems to be some sort of cushion for fans who choose to use those events as a catalyst for relationships—and Iraq and Afghanistan for settings," Stitch said. "The cushion allows them room to fictionalize real world events that changed the shape of the world as we know it, but it also insulates them from having to think about what they may be putting into the world."

The tendency of turning these events into settings or backgrounds for mostly white, male characters to fall in love has the unintended effect of displacing the effects that the war on terror has had on the world over. Steve and Bucky might fall in love during the war on terror, but they would also be acting as a part of the American military in a war that has been criticized since it started. Fanfic writers in other fandoms have come under fire for using real world tragedy as settings for fic before. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake Supernatural fanfiction about the actors Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki going to the island to do aid became controversial within the fandom. There have also been fics where characters grapple with the death of George Floyd that is written in a way that displaces the event from the broader cultural context of race in America.

"A Captain America story where Steve Rogers is a 'regular' man who joins the US Army and 'fights for our freedom' post-9/11 is unlikely to deal with the war’s effect on locals who are subject to US military intervention," Stitch said. "It’s unlikely to sit with what Captain America has always meant and what a writer is doing by dropping Steve Rogers into a then-ongoing conflict in any capacity."

After enough time, “never forget” can even morph into “but what if it never happened?” A 19k+ word Star Wars alternate universe fanfic asks this question, wondering what would have unfolded if someone with two lightsabers was on United Flight 93. This fic, part of a larger fanfic series with its own Wikia, considers what would have happened if Earth was a military front in the Clone Wars.

In this version of events, a decorated general who served in the Clone Wars is able to take back control of Flight 93 before it crashes, landing safely and preventing even more tragedy from happening that day. In the end, all of the passengers who made harrowing last calls to their loved ones before perishing in a Pennsylvania field survive thanks to the power of the Force, and are awarded medals of honor by President Bush.

Twenty years after the attacks, it’s painful to think about what would have happened if people got to work 15 minutes later, or missed their trains that morning. There weren’t Jedi masters deployed to save people in real life, but for some of the fanfic writers working today, the world of Star Wars might feel just as removed as the world before September 11, 2001.

Fiction serves as a powerful playground for processing cultural events, especially generational trauma. The act isn't neutral though; a decade's worth of fanfiction that takes place on or around 9/11 shows how our own understanding of a traumatic event can shift with time.

How 9/11 Became Fan Fiction Canon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[pikaflute]

hi, sudafed cleared my sinuses long enough to think so here’s a giant post about most of my charles headcanons

Playlist

OH btw here’s my 4 hour and 23 minute playlist for Charles. Enjoy. Yes I know I’m insane: https://open.spotify.com/user/pikaflute24/playlist/4DBxaaxbqsmJt9Fvl8AgwZ?si=OcXlYCdFRzOhuKa4p_HdUQ

General Headcanons

He was born November 24 1965. He’s currently 56, but I usually write him in his late 40s in most fanfic and content I make. So there’s this middle aged man....

He has hazel eyes. Sometimes they look green, sometimes brown. Sometimes they’ll be white but that���s when he’s using his magic so mind your business

Gear brand over his heart >:)c

:) i think he has piercings and tattoos, a skull (dead man teehee) on his upper arm, a tattoo of a date (the date pickles and him first met TEEHEE) on his left arm also has a tattoo on his arm of the day he “died” on his right. had his ears pierced when he was a teen.

Has a sweet tooth so hard. Smuggles in treats into the drawers of his desk just to snack on during the day and has a mini fridge just filled with ice cream and also sorts of other goodies. He loves brownies and cookies the most

Likes to work out and keep himself in shape. it takes his mind off of stressful things like work and the boys, and just take his morning practice sparring and doing various exercises in the mordhaus gym. 

he’s uh also very flexible so he does yoga a lot when he exercises. don’t. look too deep into that

cannot cook to save his life. he almost burned mordhaus down trying to make himself a sandwich

he can play guitar! he used to play it more often when he was younger but he rarely has the time to play it nowadays. when he does get to play it, it’s usually in private (and mainly songs by dethklok), or it’s to show off to a certain lead guitarist that yes he is playing that solo wrong

he’s ambidextrous but prefers using his right hand. he’ll use his left hand to spar in order to go easy on his opponents because hes a smug cunt

he’s 5′7 but intimidation factor adds a couple inches doesn’t it

has a scorpion named princess as a pet. he lets her sit on his desk sometimes and it scares the shit out of dethklok which makes charles laugh on the inside

hes also a cat person. one time toki brought a cat home and it settled on charles’ lap and he almost cried

loves to be a smug asshole and relishes in it. will not take shit from anyone, especially from some asshole who is trying to pull one over on him

he has no idea how social media works at all. will print memes out to show to dethklok, he’s very fond of cat memes specifically (i can has cheeseburger type beat)

he has no idea what any internet memes means he isn’t going to start learning. he is going to misuse internet phrases. are you boys, ah, finding the imposter? [cue five groans from dethklok]

knows a lot of languages. not a comprehensive list but: french, swedish, norwegian, spanish, italian, japanese, chinese, german, russian and korean

is very competitive. scarily competitive. once he starts losing in smash or mario kart all hell will break lose

very bad at showing emotions or affection, when he gets compliments he gets all red and quiet and mumbles a thank you. 

weird about being touched as well and will usually avoid it unless it’s with someone he trusts

speaking of, his love language is acts of service :)c

hates being called charlie or chuck, unless the right person calls him it ;)

he’s autistic. was nonverbal for most of his life and only talked to certain people, or anyone at all. he stims with his hands and uses his pens to fidget.

has a collection of novelty socks. he likes the ones that have polka dots or stripes

sleeps with a garfield plushie he had since he was younger. it helps him with the nightmares

when any of the boys need help sleeping (usually toki or pickles), he’ll sleep with them in his bed. after dying he had trouble sleeping some nights, so dethklok returned the favor and all piled up in his bed and helped him sleep. he didnt have nightmares after that night

hes nearsighted, and prefers to wear glasses over contacts

lactose intolerant, hes still eating mac n cheese and paying the price

metalhead but pretends to not be just to mess with his boys

crippling addiction to match 3 games. also loves to play minecraft.

overly self sacrificial. puts ones he love needs before his own, results in himself being very isolated and distant from those he cares about because he’s afraid of hurting them

his favorite colors are black and purple

coffee kinda guy. black coffee or bust

has a lot of cute novelty mugs to put his coffee in. he ones from places where dethklok tours, dethklok official ones (the only two that aren’t adorned with spikes), some cat themed ones, a couple that have ties and math references, and one from his boys that says “most brutal manager”. he drinks out of that last one the most

he has a couple of grey hairs and wrinkles, but he keeps them because they remind him that he’s human. also pickles said old men were hot but you didnt hear that from me

likes to play chess but he can never find a good opponent. all the klokateers are too scared if they win and dethklok is too distracted to ever play with him or they end up losing to quickly if charles plays against them

really wants kids. he babies his sister’s sons and daughters a TON (uncle charles always brings the best gifts :) ) and also treats toki like his own son in a way. toki doesnt mind, he really appreciates the love

speaking of, toki does call charles dad once and it makes charles cry for like. a week and a half

his favorite dethklok song is the gears :)

he likes to collect knives as a side hobby, his favorite of his collection is a sleek black one with skulls on the handle

he has a motorcycle and likes to drive it around sometimes to just be alone with himself. it’s all black with a red gear on it

lightweight but only if he drinks the amount dethklok drinks. can hold his alcohol fairly well if he drinks like a sensible human, prefers brandy and wine

he can smoke cigars to be sexy for me and me ONLY

likes to read in his spare time. he likes mystery novels and science fiction

he has soft spot for cheesy sitcoms, they’re his guilty pleasure

his favorite youtuber is lockpickinglawyer. yours should be too

usually sleeps in only his boxers but will wear a shirt if its’s cold. he tends to sleep on his side (also wants to be the little spoon when cuddled but he will never admit that)

takes vacations sometimes away from the boys despite his worry that something will go wrong (it will!). many of his vacations are usually going to visit his family and going to the shore with them, or travelling to somewhere new for a change (cue charles being a yakuza substory on his one vacation per year)

he can sew pretty well. learned from his mom and used to sew the whole his sister use to put through her soccer uniform.

can also do makeup, and usually does it for one of the boys of there’s no one else around to help

bites his lip when he’s nervous. which is a lot

likes chococat and gudetama. he’s a man of tastes

laughs really loud if you catch him off guard. he snorts sometimes too. he’s embarrassed by it, but i think its’ cute

loves law and order obviously 

he likes men

has a lot of pent up rage. very good at compressing it. sometimes

as high priest, he stays up very late trying to decipher the ancient prophecies that dethklok needed to fulfill. he doesnt sleep very much when he starts out because he misses home, so the band makes him come back (or else)

also as high priest he becomes more intune with magic granted to him after he died and he mainly uses his magic to protect his boys when they go back to being a band. also to fuck with them

the band he managed before dethklok was a band named savior who said they were a metal band with a unique sound, but that unique sound was actually just being a christian metal band that were bad at playing music. they also treated charles like shit and blamed him for them doing so poorly with sales and shows. had an unfortunate “accident” with a tour bus after charles had enough of their attitude towards him.  he denies he had anything to do with it (he did.)

Family/Childhood

He’s the baby of the family. Spoiled rotten to the max. He doesn’t admit it though but whenever he comes home you know he abuses the “:)c im the favorite” card

He has 4 older sisters: Caroline who is a high school civics teacher, Cynthia who is a librarian, Callie who is a coach for a soccer team, and Charlotte who is a lawyer/manager who manages Ladyklok, which gets awkward (and funny) when Abigail starts dating the lead singer Natalie

charles is actually one of the tallest in his family. his dad is 6’1 and his older sister Callie is 5’11. cynthia is 5’6, caroline is 5’6, and his mom and charlotte are 5’5.

his mom is a doctor and his dad is an accountant. his mom’s name is giovanna and his dad’s name is elijah

caroline is the oldest sister, followed by cynthia, callie, charlotte then charles.

Charlotte and Charles are sworn enemies since they were born on the same day a year apart and basically have the same job. They do love each other though

His father calls him Charles. Caroline and Cynthia call him Charlie. Callie calls him Chuck. Charlotte calls him Charles (derogatory). His mom calls him a whole slew of nicknames that she made up when he was young (she calls him cheese ball and he turns red)

caroline has a wife (lauren who is a chef) and two kids (evan and shelby)

cynthia is dating a coworker (viola)

callie has a husband (john who is a stay at home dad) and they have three kids (brenda, melissa, and jeff)

charlotte is dating ladyklok (and abigail). this is a weird flex on charles i think.

He had a race car bed when he was like 5

He also was also one of those kids at family game night. He almost killed Cynthia over a game of monopoly

Always got to lick the spoon first after his mom baked brownies

He grew up in North Jersey (derogatory) (also yes im projecting state shot)

He’s also Italian (derogatory)

He got bullied in middle school for a little bit but once his older sisters found out, oh boy did all hell break loose

Was in band in high school. He played flute (DONT TALK TO ME I LIKE PROJECTING), he was of course a soloist and incredibly smug about it

Took gymnastics as a kid. Can do a backflip on command. Also very flexible.

First manager gig was helping his sisters sell girl scout cookies. They raked in a lot of profits when baby bro was behind the scenes. His cut was eating thin mints for free

Loved Star Trek when he was a kid

Was incredibly gifted, and taught himself to read at a young age. didn’t talk that much though

was always sick when he was little. he would always get sinus infections and colds if someone even sneezed weird

was in mock trial in high school. one guy on his team was a jerk to him so charles made it a point to be this poor kid’s nemesis

was on the student council, treasurer of course.

was also in nhs, and he was treasurer there too

was that kid who insisted on doing the group project by himself because he didn’t want to wait on anyone to finish their part

was super rowdy as a kid, always got into trouble but his mom was a little lenient of punishment (hes a mommas boy)

when he was like super young he bit people cause he was just a little monster (charles' sisters: mom charles is biting again. charles, biting one of them: im not :/ sheesh)

wanted to be a lawyer since he was 7

put his own siblings and parents on trial and would win every trial and would always get the last cookie or a higher allowance

he shared his room with his sister Charlotte and they would set up a pillow fort on one of the beds and stay up late reading together 

loved going to the beach as a kid, his mom still has his collection of shells from the beach

on the boardwalk, he would dominate at claw machines anad carnival games. he won a bunch of plushies from himself (and his sisters obviously)

his dad and him have a super close bond. they watched star trek together and also like to watch how the stock market would do. his dad was also sometimes the judge in charles’ mock trials at home

they were very supportive when he came out as gay, he was also the first of his sibilings to come out of the closet

College

Got his masters in business management at rutgers and a JD (law degree) from seton hall law.

Started college when he was 18 (1983) and ended college when he was 26 (1991)

Wasn’t a party guy. Never got invited to many, but he never went unless a certain redhead was in town

Sustained himself off of ramen, coffee, and SSRIs to get his masters (hey man i feel ya)

Did weed like three times. Three of those times were because of, you guessed it, a certain redhead

Speaking of, his first time having sex was in his dorm with Pickles. Pickles also kicked him off of the bed (those beds are fucking tiny) while they slept, and almost burned Charles’ dorm down trying to make toast the next morning

Absolute did not do essays until the night before. Bad habit that made it’s way into Dethklok managing when he’s forced to write a legal brief before 12 am.

Loved calculus 2 for some reason. Nerd

Had a mullet. Pickles thought it was hot (still is) while Charles would rather die than remember anything about that horrid hairdo

Also went through his goth/emo phase while in Law School. He stuck out amongst the sea of sweater vests and polo shirts

Was in a band with his fellow college bandmates. The band was called Habeas Corpses and he was the lead singer who also played guitar. Their sound was kind of similar to TWRP’s first two EPs (The Device and 2nite). they had a grunge aesthetic, and yes charles dyed his mullet black (with a purple streak), for the band.

his bandmates were all fellow law students. dillan was on drums, margaret was their bass guitar, and nick was their keyboardist. all three of them also got tutored by charles while in law school. they are still best friends and write to each other sometimes

Was on the debate team, but uh kicked off due to be very competitive (he threatened to punch the opposing debater)

Was also in the chess club, also kicked off for being too competitive (lunged at a kid for cheating)

After being kicked from the two previous clubs, he joined fencing, his very competitive nature made him the best in the state

nick (the guy in charles’ band) was charles’ roommate the whole time they were in college. they may or may not have had a brief relationship before they realized they would be better as friends

nick also has a nes and charles loved to played zelda and wrote an entire guide for himself because he’s was that into the game (nerd)

occasionally would be found sleeping in the library on campus

wanted to be an RA but the resident association at his schools thought he was a little much. charles took this as a compliment

worked out a lot between studying and classes. a lot of jocks underestimated him because of his size but charles was just :) [casually lifts something heavy]

a lot of fellow classmates thought he was super cool cause of the leather he wore, and how cool and quiet he was, too bad they didnt know he was a huge nerd

tried skateboarding. once.

had a cadillac that barely started and drove like a piece of shit but that was charles’ baby

pickles tried to have sex with charles in said car btw, charles almost killed him for even daring to suggest to tarnish his beautiful baby

has damaged his back permanently because of all the books he used to carry around in his crappy back pack

did some modelling for one of his friends in college. he was very attractive and got some other modelling job through it. he tries to hide that from the boys in the future because he thinks it’s embarrassing

Relationship with Dethklok

Pickles - he’s known the drummer the longest out of any other member, and if you couldn’t tell by now, he had a brief relationship with the drummer back in the 80s (and maybe also still has a crush on him :)). charles respects and admires pickles’ talent as a musician and sometimes they play together when they have time alone. he tries to be there when pickles has a relapse in either emotions with his family or something else, but still tries to maintain a distance because he thinks that pickles doesn’t feel the same as he did in the 80s. (he does btw). nothing could break the bond these two share. not even death

Nathan - understands nathan’s quiet nature (nonverbal kings!) and strive for perfection in everything dethklok creates because he is the same way. their similarities allow them to connect on a level that allows nathan to open up about his feelings that he likes to lock away. nathan also gets charles to open his feelings up and actually care for himself for once in his damn life. charles also helps nathan with the depression he develops after charles dies and how to deal with it despite it being not brutal. nathan wants to give back and he does by becoming one of charles’ closest friends (and maybe even lovers hehehe)

Toki - charles has taken it upon himself to be toki’s father figure after seeing the way toki’s family has left him for essentially dead. ever since toki joined the band, charles has made it a point to be there for him whenever he needed it. even if it meant spending late nights reading to toki or sleeping over in toki’s room to help him sleep, he’ll do it. he blames himself for toki’s disappearance but toki assures him that he did the best he could. toki calls him dad a lot after doomstar. it makes charles cry.

Skwisgaar - unstoppable asshole meets immovable object. skwisgaar sees himself above everyone else like he does with the other dethklok members but with charles, skwisgaar knows that charles isn’t intimidated by him nor will he bow to the guitar god in anyway. this develops a game of cat and mouse between the two, with skwisgaar trying to no subtly push charles’ buttons and to see what makes him ticks, while charles resist him at every turn with a smug ‘:) is that all you got’ and it delights him to finally see the guitarist squirm under pressure.

Murderface - at first the two are very. distant to say the least. murderface used to see charles as unemotional robot and charles was fine with that and accepted the distance. overtime however, and especially after charles died, murderface warmed up to charles confiding in him things he hasn’t told the band, mainly things about his insecurities because charles is ‘fucking smart with crap like this’. and charles helps him and is happy to see him work out his problems and not bottle them anymore like the rest of his bandmates. charles also enjoys murderface’s company as a friend as well. and….he’s gonna help murderface the most with the whole traitor stuff too.

Abigail - mlm and wlw hostility. but seriously they’re good buds. he sympathizes with having to deal the moronic actions of dethklok on a daily basis and also thinks she’s really intelligent and overall fun to hang out with. they take lunch breaks frequently together and like to make fun of people at dethklok dinners together as a fun activity together. abigail will bully his ass once she finds out she’s dating charles’ sister and WILL bring up those baby pictures to get a higher raise thank you very much

Knubbler - can you say coworker besties! like abigail, he gets along because they both have to deal with dethklok being, well dethklok, but with knubbler, charles can relax a little more. the two cause problems on purpose just because they can. the two are also close friends and knubbler tries to get charles to relax for once in his life, and despite charles protests and objections, he sometimes caves and hands out with his friend (maybe boyfriend OOOOO who knows)

Sex Headcanons (IM SORRY)

um maybe he can have a giant dick (10 inches for me), it do be swinging though

daddy kink (everyone stay on this side, ill take care of him….come to daddy ;)c)

likes to do roleplay. he has a lot of costumes prepared for when his partner wants to do a scene with him

likes to bite and be bitten during sex. after a very long night, he’ll be covered in bite marks, it’s kinda hot

no gag reflex ;) he likes to deepthroat but good luck trying to get him to go down on you without him teasing

remember how i said he was flexible like eight times? yeah he uh, uses that a lot to his advantage. likes being fucked in weird positions because of it

the suit stays on during sex

he likes topping because he likes to be in control of everything he does all the time, but really wants to be told what to do sometimes and will let those he trusts do that for him

he has a dick piercing i know it

he's a very busy man, so he relies on his huge collection of toys he keeps in his bedroom and office

really good with his hands. as soon as those hands are on you, its game over

he loves to do it on his desk, makes him feel powerful. when he gets blown under his desk, it really takes all of his willpower to not cum immediately

really sensitive in weird places, specifically his ears

he likes to cuddle after sex, hes the little spoon :)

likes to be tied up, sometimes he’ll get tied up under his suit

mating press and riding are his favorite positions, giving and receiving

size queen, likes large toys and well ;)

has a private room that he sometimes goes to relieve stress, it has a fucking machine that he likes to use often when his job gets too stressful

he’s sucking people off at the klokateer glory hole, he’s uh, very good at what he does

likes to be spanked and like to spank

uses collars and leashes

maybe the klokateers can fuck him, if they’re good ;)

freeballing

likes cum on his face but doesn't seem to realize that means he’ll get cum on his glasses and will need to clean them

he can wear a chastity belt :) for me

likes being came in but will still complain about being gross after

pretty much up for anything, he’s not picky, he just wants to be in control and get off

[lighdramons]

Hi I'm back. I promised awhile ago I’d tell the story of the fucked up digi.mon cult, so I figured that’s a great start for getting back onto this hellsite.

If the read more works, everything will be below the cut and it is a mess. Just a few things before the cut though:

General TW as I will be bringing up some of the bad experiences I had as well as talking about mental illness.

I will not be using names of sites, usernames, etc. I will not answer on specific users either. I’m sure these sites are still operating somewhere privately and back in the day, some of these people were big in the Digi.mon community outside of the sites as well.

If any of the people involved see this, no ill wishes towards you guys, just my take on things.

I quit these sites back in early 2015. I do not know what happened after I quit. I am only still in contact with a few individuals who either quit around the same time as me or long before.

As a general courtesy, some of these sites still exist. Please do not go harass them. A lot of the public sites are just teens trying to figure out themselves.

If you have questions or comments after reading this whole thing, I’m happy to answer any either publicly or privately. And yes, you can reblog this post.

We need to jump back to 2007 to begin with. I was a middle schooler getting back into Digi.mon because I walked into Gamestop and Digi.mon was sitting in the new releases. And I had access to the internet. I did binge S1-5 with subs and watching reruns of the dub on Toon Disney. I spent some time on the big fansite. Great site, just bad experience at the time because I was a teen and probably lied about my age. I didn’t feel like that was the community for me. I do check it every day now for news, just never made a new account cause I don’t even remember what I used back in the day.

By end of 2008/beginning of 2009 I began looking for other sites, stumbled across the digiclipse stuff on the bad encyclopedia site, looked into it, thought it was neat, moved on. Stuck with the big site for now because the only other sites I found were RP sites and not my thing at the time. Got hit hard with depression at the start of 10th grade (late 2010) and found my way back onto the digiclipse stuff. Didn’t really believe most of it, but thought the idea of creating AI Digi.mon was neat. Joined the smaller of the two sites because it felt friendlier and most users seemed my age.

For people who do not know, digiclipse is the act of going outside and holding the toys up hoping to get teleported. Most people by the time I joined thought the people who did this were crazy. Some people liked to do it for the lolz though.

Anyways, most of what happened on the sites was just talking and hanging out in chat rooms about life and other things. It was pretty chill. I can’t speak for everyone on the sites, but for me it was an escapism kind of thing. I was depressed and hated life so pretending that a magical adventure was a possibility gave me some hope. But honestly, got a group of people who were cool to talk with for the most part. There was one older female in her mid 20s that would come in the chat drunk and sexually harass the other female users and tell all the male they should die and are worthless. Nothing was ever done about her. And honestly it was weird having her there when most of the other people on the site were under 18. That was initially my only bad experience on the sites.

At some point during 2011, there were three individuals who claimed to see and speak with their digi.mon partners. And that they could read your aura and tell you exactly your digi.mon partner. And everyone believed this shit, mostly because two of them were prominent members and how could they lie. The process was simple, you would DM them either a creative piece you’ve done (art, writing, etc) or send a photo of yourself and they’d come back in a few days and tell you who your partner was. There was only ever one individual this method of tracking did not work on and that is yours truly. Oh and at the time it hit hard because I had started falling down the rabbit hole. This is the beginning of the cult-ish stuff.

Then the Ouija board happened. I have no issues with what happened during the fucking around with said Ouija board, I have issues with everything that spiraled out of control after. They fucked around with it confirming people’s partners that the others had “found”. And eventually they asked about mine. And then it was basically said, “oh we can’t tell you the results”. I was eventually added to this secret site of “The Chosen”. And basically told, “oh your partner is the offspring/creation of THE BIG BAD” and there were all sorts of debates on what to do about it. I literally thought I was getting punked at first and these people are clearly taking this whole thing too far. No, these people all believed this. Oh and the best part, most of the people involved in this “chosen” group were in their mid 20s. Me being a depressed as fuck 16yo that just wanted something exciting in life ended up eating all this up. I felt special and chosen. I look back on it now and I’m like what a fucking idiot.

We were all taught from the three who could do the stuff I explained earlier how we can also learn to bond and communicate and see our partner. I had absolutely no progress. Eventually this stuff led to everyone in this “chosen” group getting a “special guardian spirit”. Again, I made no progress on this. And to the point where they made me feel special again, I was the only person who had the wrong “guardian spirit” and they eventually found my “real one”, more on this later.

These discussions moved from a forum site to a private skype chat room, and then further smaller private chat rooms. The movement to skype is where I started having some bad experiences. I gave a few of my “close” friends on the site my phone number, soon everyone had my number. And this happened to multiple people over the years. My own stupidity at the time.

This stuff continued as I finished high school. At the time, I still managed to maintain my social life with school friends, keep up my grades, etc. Got into college with a good scholarship in my dream field. And then I started to go downhill once I got to school. The longer this stuff went on, the more you were expected to be involved. Including being on skype calls all night. It slowly began consuming my life. I ended up not only with depression, but ending up with an ED that was tied to anxiety so I’d go days without eating. I was seeing things and hearing voices, which was highly encouraged because it meant things were working. I literally could not tell the difference of when I was asleep or awake. I honestly do not remember the majority of my freshman year of college. I had no real friends and was just barely scraping by grade-wise. And well, the academic year almost ended with me hanging from a pipe in my dorm.

I ended up running the site I started on as an admin after the original admin team left. And it was expected you do not mention any of the “secret” stuff on the main site. Over the years I know it became clear to the users not included that there were secrets in the background. And those who knew stuff would actively fuck with these users. And if I haven’t made it clear yet, there was a hierarchy to this whole secret group. And it was the original three who were mentioned at the beginning that were on top. And what they said was gospel. Whatever they claimed is what happened and whatever rules they had were the rules. But of course certain people could break the rules and get away with it.

This next part happened at some point during my freshman year and will be relevant again later on. This is the biggest TW section so skip if you have to. I had a user dox me. He had my home address and threatened to post it. He had sent it privately to a few other users as well that alerted me of this. His reasoning? I would not date him or say I loved him. He told me that he would come to my house, murder me, r*pe my dead body, because he is the only one who gets to have me. Another user got involved and called the cops. I do not know if anything ever came of this because I never spoke to anyone about it. I at the time had admin privileges on one of the sites so I banned him and blocked his IP and I blocked him on anything I could. And I continued doing this over the years. I was told I was a bad person for doing this because I did not understand him. This lead to a lot of the things in the above paragraph getting worse.

As this all continued, there were battles and casualties and everyone ended up with like 20 partners. And if you haven’t noticed I’ve stopped using the term digi.mon entirely in the past few paragraphs. That’s because oh they weren’t digi.mon. They were spirits/dimensional beings that took on a form we were comfortable with and we formed a bond with. And I kept going along with all of this because I was in too deep at this point. And obviously yes, this all made sense. So at some point during this time, my “spirit” went to sleep and a new one “awakened”. And I of course still went along with all this. The BIG BAD kept mutating into stronger forms and blah blah blah.

During my fall semester sophomore year, I joined theatre at my college and did tech. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to begin breaking away from this. I started to get an actual friend group and have less time for these sites. But there was always a pull of “you have to be here”. You were expected to be on skype calls and/or active in chat.

Well, that all changed at the start of 2015. They wanted a deletion of all the other sites and they would have one site united under one belief system. I was not a huge fan of this and made this known, but also offered to help in the coding as that was a skill I had that no one else really had. It got out around that I was a cunt and a power hungry bitch and blah blah blah. If it was just that, I would probably not have left. No no no, I was accused of lying about the shit that that user said and did to me. Because he is such a nice guy that could never do that type of stuff. And unless I provided the receipts I was clearly an attention seeking liar that wanted to ruin his life. That was the straw. I fucking blacked out in a rage and attempted to delete some of the different websites, I blasted some of these people on their real facebooks, and then I deleted all of my accounts and blocked everyone and blocked their numbers.

After that, I started talking with other people that quit. I started enjoying my college life. And I tried to act like none of that stuff had happened. I distanced myself from those individuals that were active in the Digi.mon community. I stopped hearing the voices and seeing things. I started going to therapy. My road hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve come a long way since I got out of this stuff. Honestly going to meet up with one old member after covid is all clear cause we’ve known each other for over a decade now and its about time we finally meet in person.

So yeah, that’s my story. I know I jumped around a bit and thoughts might not be too clear, but I wanted to share the fucked up things that happen in the background of the digi.mon community. Did I have good times? Hell yeah. The Olive Garden incident still to this day is iconic. We played d&d oneshots sometimes. We had memes. We all watched xros and hunters together live. And I still have some good friends out of this. The most fascinating thing out of all of this is everyone from the community that I still am either in contact with or see them via social media had admitted over the years to suffer from some kind of mental illness and has come out as part of the LGBTQA+ community. My own conclusion is a lot of us got sucked in due to depression/escapism and just a feeling of not belonging. And being around people of similar age with similar interests just made things more bearable at times. It also made a lot of us very vulnerable to the manipulation that took place, whether it was intentional or just one big group delusion created by multiple mentally ill people. I call it a cult, but I'm sure people will disagree with me. Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't good for my mental health in the long run.

If this shit is still going on, I hope people aren’t letting it consume their lives. And I just wish the best for everyone even if some of the shit hurt me.

As I said up top, if you want me to elaborate on anything or have questions, I’m good with talking about stuff. If you know me IRL and are reading this and are like "RACHEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK" I owe you a drink and explanation. And of course it Is okay to reblog. This is one hell of a comeback post on this site, am I right?