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Pick posted:Well, she mentioned an obsession with Advent Children, which was... 2005, according to Wikipedia.
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Oct 23, 2011 18:42
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I knew someone who latched onto Squall from FF8 as her obsession. She'd write self-insert fanfiction where he falls in love with her. He acted like a perfect romantic prince, with some other very non-Squall trait that escapes me now. At the time I knew enough about the game to know a little about his personality (at least at the beginning of the game) and I told her how he acted in-game. She got annoyed at me for telling her that her interpretation of him was wrong.
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Oct 23, 2011 19:03
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This whole affair is beginning to remind me of a friend I had in high school. Ha came from Circumstances and one of his primary coping mechanisms was to make himself the center of attention by any means necessary. He did things like claim to be a master hacker who took down the entire Yahoo network in 2001. I remember thinking to myself, "You don't even know how to set up your router, dude."
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Oct 23, 2011 19:22
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Proletariat Beowulf posted:I don't know what the timeframe on this is, but I think she may have been victimized by this movie made by cultists. Many Universes Theory really needs some very careful explaining, not exploiting for personal fulfillment at age stupid-teen. More recently, I got to go to an academic lecture about fandom. The conference was about Communication Studies, and the lecturer had spent gotten his PhD (I think) studying how music fans have acted throughout the years, starting way back in the gay nineties with opera singers. At first the music itself was causing wild reactions, and diaries of the "fanatics" ended up talking more about the singers personal lives ("I bet we'd be friends!") rather than ability. The literature academics in the audience said the same happened with several classic authours, and then, yes, people started admitting to liking the characters more. Walking out of the lecture, my now boyfriend tells me it rang some bells because he's taking a class about Christian mysticism- basically, people who have done this with saintly or biblical figures. Saint Teresa of Ávila comes to mind. It's all over, it's everywhere, and it seems like a good psychologist could spend some time on it.
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Oct 23, 2011 19:38
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Goons are really bad at picking friends
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Oct 23, 2011 19:38
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Clockroach posted:I'm the same age as the OP, and this is what led my high-school boyfriend to start believing that Digimon were real. It didn't help that his mom was very strongly Wiccan, and liked to reinforce everything that would rationalize something like this being possible. It wasn't a romantic thing (well, I hope not) It was still a "I am their hero" bit. Oh man, this just reminded me of a guy I used to know. Thankfully only over the internet, but drat if he wasn't crazy. He had, in his head, Kari from Digimon. And very pointedly, the little girl version from the first season not her (slightly) older self from the second. And they were functionally married. And would "sleep" together, on a regular basis. He'd go on and on about how she was his guardian angel and she was a little girl to reflect his own childlike innocence (dude was older than me) and so forth and so on. His family made him get a five hour a week job and he did nothing but bitch about how hard it was and how the only reason he didn't off himself was his little make-believe Digimon girlfriend.
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Oct 23, 2011 19:50
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Speaking of Digimon... ... I guess since the premise of the show is already "there's an alternative universe, created by people" it's just a magnet for this kind of thing.
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Oct 23, 2011 20:01
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Clockroach posted:I'm the same age as the OP, and this is what led my high-school boyfriend to start believing that Digimon were real. It didn't help that his mom was very strongly Wiccan, and liked to reinforce everything that would rationalize something like this being possible. It wasn't a romantic thing (well, I hope not) It was still a "I am their hero" bit. I'd be interested in reading more about this. Does anybody know of any books, or documentaries, or what have you on the subject?
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Oct 23, 2011 20:54
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Vicas posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Goons are really bad at picking friends If you're a Something Awful poster and you don't have stories about a terrible, creepy friend you had growing up then you were probably that terrible creepy friend  .
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Oct 23, 2011 22:21
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Pork Lift posted:If you're a Something Awful poster and you don't have stories about a terrible, creepy friend you had growing up then you were probably that terrible creepy friend Well, god drat if that doesn't make me feel good!
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Oct 23, 2011 22:29
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Hedera Helix posted:I'd be interested in reading more about this. Does anybody know of any books, or documentaries, or what have you on the subject? Look up schizotypy. This general kind of magical thinking is rather well covered, though this particular iteration may not be.
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Oct 23, 2011 22:36
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Vicas posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Goons are really bad at picking friends Not in my case! In my case the weird friend was made by my brothers. Believed she was a vampire despite being 300 pounds easy, reacted violently to... basically everything. Thank God that any time I asked her about what Frankenstein's Monster was up to these days or about the ongoing vampire war with the werewolves, she thought I was being serious. But then my cool normal friends spent an inordinate amount of time talking behind each others back and forming petty grudges over nothing and doing stupid poo poo they regretted later and basically being massive loving headaches, while my brothers' weird friends have also included an aspiring stage magician, various martial arts geniuses and a six foot six actor/breakdancer. So I guess I'm the idiot here.
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Oct 23, 2011 23:57
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Sir Prancelot posted:This whole affair is beginning to remind me of a friend I had in high school. Ha came from Circumstances and one of his primary coping mechanisms was to make himself the center of attention by any means necessary. He did things like claim to be a master hacker who took down the entire Yahoo network in 2001. I remember thinking to myself, "You don't even know how to set up your router, dude." I had a From Circumstances friend too. For years she did the "I'm a fairy dragon Princess from another planet!" thing until puberty hit. Then she discovered she could get way, way more attention from people by simply loving them. I had an awkward lesbian moment with her, too. She announced one day that she was a lesbian, sat on my lap, and offered to have sex with me. When I turned her down she hosed the guy I had a crush on for revenge. Ah, middle school.
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Oct 24, 2011 00:12
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Wandering Knitter posted:I had a From Circumstances friend too. For years she did the "I'm a fairy dragon Princess from another planet!" thing until puberty hit. Then she discovered she could get way, way more attention from people by simply loving them.  drat! All Norman ever did was make up bullshit technological/physical feats he achieved far far away from anyone who could witness them.
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Oct 24, 2011 00:36
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Hammer Backspace posted:Not in my case! In my case the weird friend was made by my brothers. Believed she was a vampire despite being 300 pounds easy, reacted violently to... basically everything. Thank God that any time I asked her about what Frankenstein's Monster was up to these days or about the ongoing vampire war with the werewolves, she thought I was being serious. Hmm... come to think of it, there aren't that many fat vampires in fiction. Possibly because it would get in the way of all the wish fulfillment fantasies?
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Oct 24, 2011 00:40
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 This thread. And here I was thinking the worst thing about anime fandom were the 25+ year old dudes who were always trying to get close to 13 year olds girls. I've never met anyone this far gone.
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Oct 24, 2011 00:47
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^^^ You're very fortunate.Viola the Mad posted:I can understand liking and admiring fictional women, but 'soulbonding' them? I would love to know what the tipping point is between admiring a fictional character as confidence builder and genuinely believing they exist solely for your enjoyment (as opposed to being available to all readers/viewers). To be honest  I've imagined having conversations with fictional characters - not on a IT'S TOTALLY REAL ON ANOTHER DIMENSIONAL PLANE GUYS way, but as a tool to open up lines of thinking that aren't immediately obvious to me. When I'm out with my actual friends or talking to family about something worrisome those fictional tools don't come into play.And maybe that's the answer to the tipping point? Even though I spent several years struggling to not be socially awkward and not always getting along with family and friends, I have an amazing, strong support group on both fronts in my old age. Every time this awful soulbonding junk comes up it seems to be someone abused, abandoned, forgotten; combine that with tweens/teens easily influenced and too smart with no useful outlet and BAM FF7 Houses and unwashed peasant skirts!
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Oct 24, 2011 00:52
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I haven't played the Metroid games, but Samus is supposed to be this badass, intelligent lady who saves the universe on multiple occasions, right? If you admire her so much, be a brave person like her. You can't save the universe from Space Pirates but you can still go out and make something of yourself. Face the challenges of the world and try to make it a better place, even if only by a little bit. You don't have to be a bounty hunter, just start volunteering at the local homeless shelter.
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SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:^^^ You're very fortunate. Pretty much. Take the girl I mentioned. Her father had died in a drunk driving accident. Her mother was an abusive drunk. She had isolated all other girls our age with said Fairy Dragon Princess stuff. Literally the only people giving her any attention was me and guys who would have sex with her. I tried so hard to help her but in the end I gave up too. Last I heard from her she said she was going to marry her current gently caress buddy because the Earth Goddess told her to in a dream. And that if they had a kid then he couldn't leave her! That was almost ten years ago now. She's either dead, a hooker, has a kid going through the exact same poo poo she did, or all of the above.
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Oct 24, 2011 01:04
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I actually had a friend like this that wasn't sucked into the void of her own delusion. We have known each other since fifth grade (both almost 20 now) and when we were 12-13 we were into all that culty fandom stuff like Rocky Horror, Phantom of the Opera, anime and etc. I was mostly just abusing eyeliner and writing a lot of fanfiction while she took it a few leaps further. We had developed a kind of roleplaying game similar to what the OP is talking about where we'd take turns talking to each other like we were the characters we liked/had fictional crushes on. None of the people in our group seemed to take it too seriously. But then my friend convinced herself that she was some kind of special vessel that the characters would actually, reawwy reawwy manifest through. Once she drew this convoluted, circular symbol thing and told me that it had come to her in a vision and it was some kind of key. She said she was being inspired by the "Fae" of whom Jareth of Labyrinth fame was the king and overseer (can you guess what her favorite movie was?) who were imbuing her with these powers of communication from another realm. I would grill her about the hinkier bits of her theory and she would come up with lazy explanations. i'm pretty sure that this all stemmed from low self-esteem and boredom at home, being the token fat kid with bushy eyebrows and a bad self-dye job in our grade and living at home in a tiny apartment with no car and no siblings due to her mom's mental issues and their general economic status. But eventually, she kind of...grew out of it. She started taking care of herself and we both became more interested in exercise and not eating junk food 24/7. I would attribute it largely to reading about people who were ten times weirder and grosser on the internet and subsequently achieving a certain sense of self-awareness about this bizarre fandom culture we had involved ourselves in. Now it's all just a source of comedy gold when one of us remembers something about it. We're roommates and still best friends today in college. She dropped about 2/3 of her former size and mellowed out a ton. So not everyone who gets into this stuff is a hopeless nutcase! These stories are great, OP. The illustrations really make them ~*~magical~*~ Ophelia Swims fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 01:09
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I see stories like this on the internet and think how lucky I was to have escaped. My small circle of friends were all serious nerds who loved fantasy fiction and were always lending each other new books, but no one ever insisted that they were a fairy anime princess. One girl did once tell me she saw dragons, but I never heard anything about said dragons after the one time, and she chilled out considerably in college. I did meet this one girl when I went to college. At first she seemed like a fellow nerd to hang out with, but then she told me that she couldn't read. Oh, she was perfectly literate, but her parents (who were apparently very controlling) had forbidden her to read fiction and now she couldn't possibly bring herself to read it any more, even though she was living in a dorm far from her parents at college. She insisted that she had been an avid fiction reader before the crackdown and now terribly wished she could start reading again, but it was just impossible. When I called bullshit, she said that she didn't want other people's works to influence her own creative efforts. When I called bullshit again, she said that she couldn't stand to look at art or writing that was better than anything she produced, because then she would get unbearably jealous. Shortly after this conversation, she told me she had a split personality who was scary dangerous and I should hope to never meet. Sensing the crazy, I started avoiding her.
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Oct 24, 2011 03:00
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These are fascinating stories, thanks for sharing them, Uglynoodles. Please continue illustrating. I didn't come from Circumstances exactly, but my family moved there when I was ten, and I had a few experiences with crazy. I really feel for these people. They have legitimate problems that they won't overcome without help, and they'll probably never receive that help. I could have very easily been one of those kids. Maybe I was. Proletariat Beowulf posted:I wonder what would have become of her if she had run into Lovecraft's writing before anime and geeked out over that. Would she be schlicking it to shoggoth-rape or would Tsothaggua be waiting in the nether blacknesses of un-ness to eat all reality but plant his ur-dimensional fuckseed into her snowflake-cervix? "Snowflake-cervix" is an excellent and useful word and I am going to add it to my lexicon.
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Oct 24, 2011 03:25
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 Attention goons! The OP is Denise but doesn't know it when she posts.
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Oct 24, 2011 03:41
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Oxford Comma posted:
This thread Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
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Oct 24, 2011 03:44
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Schwarzwald posted:"Snowflake-cervix" is an excellent and useful word and I am going to add it to my lexicon. You just justified my liberal arts education, then. And yeah, noodles, keep this fun-tastic train a-comin'. Much appreciated. For those who feel such regret for these people, just remember that you can't help someone who doesn't need it. I quit trying to solve all the world's problems one person at a time a long while back, and I'm better for it.
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Oct 24, 2011 04:52
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Proletariat Beowulf posted:You just justified my liberal arts education, then. I thought that it was "you can't help someone who doesn't want it", not "need"?
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Oct 24, 2011 04:57
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OP I keep checking this thread like every hour waiting for your next post!!! You keep us eagerly waiting so loonngggggggggg 
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Oct 24, 2011 05:26
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ornery bean posted:OP I keep checking this thread like every hour waiting for your next post!!! You keep us eagerly waiting so loonngggggggggg
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Oct 24, 2011 05:36
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ornery bean posted:OP I keep checking this thread like every hour waiting for your next post!!! You keep us eagerly waiting so loonngggggggggg Not to be a contrarian, but I love the updates being short and spaced out. I get the crazy doled out in little bits, day by day. It's homeopathy for insanity.
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Oct 24, 2011 05:43
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Sir Prancelot posted:I keep expecting the next post to be a photo of Denise wearing the OP's skin as a bloody headdress   "You wanna gently caress me? Heero Yuy'd gently caress me."
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Oct 24, 2011 05:52
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Gau posted:Not to be a contrarian, but I love the updates being short and spaced out. I get the crazy doled out in little bits, day by day. It's homeopathy for insanity. Yeah, but I suspect this thread is going to get pretty big and it's going to suck for people to trawl through it all. It'll be worth it though. edit:  I forgot you could filter posts.
No Hephaestus fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 06:36
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This thread is starting to sound a little like the plot to 'Heavenly Creatures,' which itself was based on some disturbing true events. Fantastic magic kingdoms, imaginary guardian princes, gender dysphoria, escapism. I just hope this account of runaway adolescent imagination doesn't end in murder. I think we've all had experience with 'that friend' who couldn't deal with the reality they were born into, which is why this thread resonates and seems so familiar to most of us. It's sad that at a time when you're so invested in developing your own identity, you feel so much responsibility for being there for a friend in dire need. You can only go so far until you realize you're out of your depth and the kind of support they need is best left to family and professionals. And usually by that time you're tired, stressed, bitter, and the friendship is long gone. This thread is really fantastic and dredges up all sorts of repressed memories from my own youth. Uglynoodles, it seems like you've recovered from any trauma this inflicted on you a while ago. Thanks for being brave enough to open it up again and share. (p.s. the pictures are really great!)
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Oct 24, 2011 06:45
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InternetSuperqueero posted:Yeah, but I suspect this thread is going to get pretty big and it's going to suck for people to trawl through it all. It'll be worth it though. Filtering posts by the OP is a pretty simple process, so it's not really a problem for people who are only interested in reading the stories.
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Oct 24, 2011 06:49
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uglynoodles posted:That is a resounding yes and yes. She apparently goes to a lot of anime cons and recently a huge batch of pictures from a con photoshoot were uploaded to her gallery of her dressed as some demon dragon thing -- presumably what she imagines Parrier to be, and so I was inspired. Recently she told Kat that she was certain Autobots were taking the form of nearby cars and I think Optimus was in love with her. That's kind of a bummer. I always get a kick out of stories like these since I never personally knew anybody even remotely like this. Even the super nerdy kids at my highschool still bathed and didnt dress like animes. Then the couple people I knew in college that were in the anime club still liked to go out and party on the weekends and generally acted normal. Every time I read about people like Denise I always hope the story ends with them giving up on basing their entire life around fictional stuff and kicking rear end at real life.
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Oct 24, 2011 07:45
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Ophelia Swims posted:But then my friend convinced herself that she was some kind of special vessel that the characters would actually, reawwy reawwy manifest through. Once she drew this convoluted, circular symbol thing and told me that it had come to her in a vision and it was some kind of key. She said she was being inspired by the "Fae" of whom Jareth of Labyrinth fame was the king and overseer (can you guess what her favorite movie was?) who were imbuing her with these powers of communication from another realm. I would grill her about the hinkier bits of her theory and she would come up with lazy explanations. i'm pretty sure that this all stemmed from low self-esteem and boredom at home, being the token fat kid with bushy eyebrows and a bad self-dye job in our grade and living at home in a tiny apartment with no car and no siblings due to her mom's mental issues and their general economic status. This story is extra funny, seeing as how the message of Labyrinth is basically "at some point you have to grow up, break out of your shell of comforting fantasies and realise that the world doesn't exist for your benefit". Good to hear she eventually took that to heart and got her poo poo sorted out.
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Oct 24, 2011 09:00
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Vicas posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask / Tell > Goons are really bad at picking friends That sums it up pretty drat well. I knew a guy similar to this in high school, bad memories aplenty.
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Oct 24, 2011 12:49
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ASTRAL RAPE BABIES On a particularly nice sunny day I wanted to go down either to the local woods, or the beach, or somewhere nice outside. After the Totally Real Possession incident Denise was uncommonly sane for a while. She did still talk about Sephiroth and whatever she was doing on the Astral Plane at night or whatever but she actually allowed me to talk about other things, actually participated in the discussion about other things, and we laughed about school and other stuff. Generally, Denise seemed like she was on the mend somehow and so I wanted to encourage that by engaging her in more activities. We had both seen the same new film recently, so I was hoping that we'd be able to go on a walk and talk about that for a while instead of Sephiroth and how she was definitely a half-dragon demon in the Inu-Yasha universe. I rang her up. I remember this conversation with such perfect clarity because of how hosed up it was. I remember how it made me feel and what she said exactly. The conversation went as follows: "It's a really nice day. Do you want to come with me to the woods? I have some lemonade and a cooler bag and I know a nice place to go. I could make some sandwiches to take with us. We could go to the beach and get an icecream or something, I have some pocket money." "I can't. I'm cleaning my room today." "You were cleaning your room yesterday. You can take a break for a couple hours." Denise was quiet for a few seconds. Possibly for effect, probably because she was thinking up an excuse. "I can't." "Well, okay," I muttered. Stupid of me to think she'd come out anyway. If it wasn't a trip to the comic store to get her the newest issue of Watebaa-De-Fakku or something, she wasn't interested. "I can't because I'm pregnant," she said. I think I slapped my own forehead so hard that Denise heard it because she asked what the sound was. I said I tripped or something. "You're what?" "I'm pregnant." "With who?" "I don't... know." "What?" "Last night I felt a presence in the room and then there were hands touching me. I didn't want it to, I tried to get it to stop, but it... Had sex with me. And now I'm pregnant." "What?" At this point my question had pretty much ceased to be a question and was more of a statement. "I told it not to and tried to push it off me, but it wouldn't stop advancing, and it kept whispering in my ear... It grabbed my boobs and then it forced--" I remember clutching the phone with so much rage that the plastic creaked in my fingers. Denise was really doing this to get out of going to the loving beach with me? Denise was saying this so that she could get out of going on a loving picnic in the sun because she was too lazy to walk around? The memories of what happened to me that summer flooded back in a single moment as I listened to her blabber on about how some apparently faceless spirit with a presence that felt suspiciously like Sephiroth's just couldn't help itself anymore and had used the Astral to partially manifest in this world and slake its burning lust by raping her. Of course babies conceived in the Astral develop at hundreds of times the normal rate of a normal human child, so she was already -- "Denise. Denise you are not pregnant. And nobody raped you." "Yes, I am, I can feel it--" "If you don't want to come out to the beach or the woods with me just say so. You don't have to make up a bunch of poo poo like this just to get out of it." "No, it's not that," she protested. "It really happened! I'm really pregnant and I don't know who the father is. He was so forceful... I tried to stop him... He said he couldn't help himself, that he had waited too long... That he couldn't resist me. We should find out who the father is..." I couldn't believe it. My throat tightened and I felt tears welling up. A few times that summer when it happened, I had declined to go out with her. At the time I told her something of that nature happened, although I was not specific, and that I was still dealing with it. Denise had apparently gotten out of that that rape and assault was a valid excuse to get out of something, and since cleaning her room failed she had better use that. Also pregnancy was an awesome sympathy card. Right? "I'm going now," I said, and hung up. I remember vividly staring at my cooler bag that I had put a couple cans of lemonade in and how it turned into a blur of colour as I teared up. I cried for a long time that day. But it gets worse. Next time, Denise's Babbys with illustrations! quote:What anime was it Denise wanted you to be Animu Angel Queen of? I liked The Vision of Escaflowne. uglynoodles fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 14:10
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I admit to not reading the whole thread other than the OP's posts, but the people in this thread sound A LOT like the FFVII House people documented here: http://www.demon-sushi.com/warning/mee.html Also there can be found somewhere in an old SA thread about terrible roommates some horrible girl who started a Suikoden cult and is tangentially related to the FFVII House people. Actually most of the stories about people like this on the internet have been tangentially related - it seems like they all know each other, or read the same websites, or are part of the same LJ group or something. A lot of them are featured on this ED page http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Otakukin like the aforementioned FFVII house people "Jen and Hojo". The other story about the Suikoden cultist is The Sarah Saga http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Sarah_Saga but I think a lot of the links are down. Most of the blog entries were posted in the old SA thread, though.
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Oct 24, 2011 14:23
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Gau posted:Not to be a contrarian, but I love the updates being short and spaced out. I get the crazy doled out in little bits, day by day. It's homeopathy for insanity. 5 long posts between the 20th and the 24th, with smaller posts to answer specific asides and even illustrations, I think that's pretty great.
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Oct 24, 2011 14:39
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uglynoodles posted:ASTRAL RAPE BABIES Man it's stories like these that make me glad that my little anime group was just simply stupid instead of flat out insane.
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Oct 24, 2011 15:06
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I don't know how to react to that last story. We've already established that Denise was egotistical, schizotypal, delusional, as well as loving crazy. I guess we add "horrible person" to the list. That girl needs therapy, and drugs--powerful drugs. What a hell of an ordeal to go through.
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Oct 24, 2011 15:08
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