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Oh lord, I was just at Sakura Con.
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Apr 2, 2013 06:10
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uglynoodles posted:
Oh lord, what I wouldn't give to see more of these. Also lol at all you nerds who go to cons 
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Apr 2, 2013 12:00
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Base Emitter posted:Ah poo poo, the original Denise was in my hood? Goddammit! I missed her as well! I can vouch for Sakura-Con being a fun and well-rounded con. Sure you have the glompy weeaboos rolling around, but they're far and few. They stay away from me, at least. I was at Norwescon (a sci-fi and fantasy convention), which has it's own set of weird. The stench that some of these people omit, folks. Blech. Not necessarily weird and otaku-esque, my story of strange from Norwescon is about a woman (let's call her Anne) that was at a panel my husband and I were at about living with invisible disabilities. Instead of it being a discussion panel, it turned into a bitchfest where folks ranted more than asked questions led by Anne, who saw it her right to shout about everything that she's been through. My husband and I weren't happy overall with the panel - we were hoping to hear from someone on the panel who had bipolarism and depression and how they live and cope with it. Anne must have taken a liking to us because at a friend's music concert, she approaches us, with a duck puppet in tow, to tell us how she was watching us during the panel, telling us what she saw us doing, and repeats everything that she had said at the panel. She's not maliciously crazy or anything, I just don't think she gets a chance to be heard in her everyday life and considers the con as her escape from all that. Anne and my husband did find some common ground since they both speak German. She and I did because, admittedly, her duck puppet is adorable.
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Apr 3, 2013 05:30
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monsteroftheweek posted:Caleb Was a Final Girl Haha, no way. I had an internet boyfriend pull this on me once. I think I've maybe written about him on the forums before, but here's the full story anyway. Like many people in this thread, as a teenager I was a socially awkward nerd who found solace in chatrooms talking to other weirdos about things my school peers could never understand. Through one of the chatrooms, I ended up "dating" a 19 year old British guy, Chris, when I was 14. We had the same messed up sense of humour and taste in music and he was so cute and grown-up and saw me as an equal instead of just a kid, you guys! Unsurprisingly, Chris had severe mental issues that I had no way of dealing with. For one, Chris was an alcoholic. We started dating I think in early December, and while I spent the Christmas with my (dumb, boring) family, he spent most of it partying with friends. On New Year's Eve (his time) I logged on to wish him a happy new year, but he didn't show up until 3 or 4 in the morning. He was smashed. He could barely type a full sentence, but he repeatedly tried to tell me how much he loved me and how special I was to him. I was laughing and joking around, telling him to go to bed, when the conversation took a darker turn. He was worthless without me, I was too good for him, in fact I was the best thing that ever happened in his lovely life. You see, he'd done some things when he was younger. Terrible things. But it was going to be OK now because he had me, and to prove how much he loved me, he carved my name into his arm.  I don't even remember how I reacted to that, but I remember feeling disturbed and sickened - not enough to dump him, though. He sobered up and never mentioned the self-mutilation tribute after that, but the "terrible things" came up when he was drunk again just a few weeks later. When Chris was around 13, he lived in a very bad neighbourhood. There were several violent gangs in the area, and they all recruited young kids to be drug pushers and eventually gang members. Chris was one of them. He started out selling heroin on the streets and soon was given his first gun. He moved up the ranks quickly and became known as a force to be reckoned with. He executed dozens of rival gang members before his 15th birthday. It all came to a head when one of the enemy gangs murdered his girlfriend right in front of him. He held her as she lay dying in his arms, and renounced his drug-dealing murdersome ways before starting a new life in a different suburb with his parents. Maybe I sounded a bit skeptical about a 14 year old hitman because Chris dared me to google his old suburb and find the crime reports. I did and found literally nothing. But he was so emotional about the faces of the murdered gang members haunting his dreams, and the girlfriend who died for the crime of loving him. How could I doubt his story? Anyway the relationship went on for another 6 months. Chris would regularly get wasted and tell me he was going to break up with me because he was just making my life worse, and he might as well just drink himself to death. I would take the morning off school and frantically beg him not to kill himself. Other shock reveals: - He had severe psychosis and if he didn't take his meds he would dissociate. Sometimes he woke up with blood on his clothes and had no idea where it came from. - A lifetime of smoking and heavy drug use had given him lung cancer. He went in for several operations over the time I knew him, each with survival rates of 10-20% but he always miraculously pulled through. I kind of wish this one was real. - His ex was totally insane (not the dead one, the one after that). She once kidnapped him and tied him to a chair for days. This came up when I was paranoid that he was "cheating" on me with her. He ended up dumping me to e-date other girls from the chatroom. I was pretty cut up about it at the time but now I'm just glad it ended before I got even more emotionally dependent on him.
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Apr 3, 2013 09:40
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Way too many of these stories involve emotional abuse and manipulation. What a retard though. This story would be hilarious if it wasn't for the traumatised 14-year-old. What's the bet he'd never actually seen a gun in his life?
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Apr 3, 2013 09:51
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Well he's British, so pretty high since they're a lot harder to get here then over the pond is the US of A. The life he's describing sounds like something out of the Wire, rather then England. Don't get me wrong, we've got gang and gang violence here just like any where. But over here we've got more knife related crime then gun, since they're easier to get and also to conceal then a fire arm. Sounds like he was trying to reel you in with a story about gangs he'd seen on television. Did you ever see a picture of your name he carved into his arm? Talking about carving arms up, here's a short little story I went through with Kry. The day I was convinced to self harm So in the mental land of Kry, there was a kind of magic that shouldn't really be used but apparently everyone did anyway. This was called Blood Magic, it was apparently more powerful then normal magic and also more dangerous. The key thing about blood magic, was that it needed blood. Now I don't remember what I was doing at the time, or what was going on in the meta plot of "Everyone and their mum attacks Kry so we have to protect her since she's sooooo special you guys" But it was decided that I needed to use some blood magic. Which required my blood. Which meant I had to cut myself. Now I was at my parents home at the time, my family were all here which meant that not only did I need to cut myself, then deal with the wound. I also had to hide it from them. I've always been particularly afraid of pain, it goes against every instinct I have to hurt myself, so the idea of making myself bleed put me in a cold sweat already. I have a Swiss army knife in my desk draw from my childhood days camping with the Scouts, so I thought I'd use that, cut the tip of my finger and be done with it. You might be asking yourself "John, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU EVEN CUTTING YOURSELF?! RUN YOU STUPID BASTARD!" to which I might reply, "Past me can't here you, also I probably can't either, so you might want to type it instead" In truth the main reason I was cutting myself was in case I was asked to show the cut. Not to do magic or any bullshit like that. But simply so if it was checked upon and found that I hadn't done it I wouldn't get in trouble with Kry. Why yes I was that spineless, thank you for asking. I'll save you the details, but the knife part of the Swiss army knife was blunt, so I had to go searching the house for a sharper knife, avoiding everyone I could to hide what I was doing. I tried scissors, razors, even thought about stabbing myself with a pin, but no matter what I did, I couldn't bring myself to actually cut myself. I was there for half an hour, trying to dredge up the courage to cut myself, and I couldn't. When I returned to Kry, I was greeted not by "Are you okay?" but with "What took you so long?" I made some excuse about how it wouldn't stop bleeding, I wasn't asked to show the 'cut', instead things progressed as if I had cut myself. The problem was solved. I had lost some self respect for myself, but was unharmed. Ultimately, I learned a lesson that day: I found that I would make a terrible Emo. ~Fin
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Apr 3, 2013 10:28
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Hitmage posted:Oh lord, I was just at Sakura Con. Did you give her breasts the recognition they deserve? The idea of someone literally saying that is hilarious to me.
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Apr 3, 2013 10:41
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JohnOfOrdo3 posted:So in the mental land of Kry, there was a kind of magic
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Apr 3, 2013 12:10
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Question Mark Mound posted:I know that this is a tragic story, but just as I read this line "It's a Kind of Magic" by Queen came on the radio and made things far too cheerful and whimsical for me. Oh man I love moments like that 
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Apr 3, 2013 12:12
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naptalan posted:
This is literally straight from the manga Mirai Nikki. Not even creative with his lies.
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Apr 5, 2013 18:20
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Miaou posted:This is literally straight from the manga Mirai Nikki. Not even creative with his lies. I swear I've seen that in every other comedy ever. When picking lies one should remember not to draw upon half of film.
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Apr 5, 2013 19:55
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Most of these stories are about people we met growing up, but I didn't know anyone that bad at the time. I did, however, meet one as an adult. I'm a librarian, more specifically at a public library, and we have an arrangement with a couple of local schools where a bus can pick up some kids from school and drop them off at the library for a few hours. Mainly, this is for parents who can't get off work in time to get their kids right when school ends. Naturally, most of these kids form into little clubs - the Harry Potter club, the Twilight club, etc. Perfectly harmless for the most part, and if it gets the kids reading, putting up with "But Edward is SO HOT!" for a few hours every week day at work is an acceptable price. However, one of these clubs is an anime club. Again, for the most part it's harmless - just substitute "Zuko" for "Edward." At the anime club, however, is a young man we'll call Tim. Tim is about 13 or 14, and is both extremely tall for his age, and extremely skinny. He's also unhealthily pale, but at least he seems to bathe regularly. All told, not terribly unusual for a geeky kid in 8th grade. Except for one thing. Tim is obsessed with Street Fighter. Not the games, but the Japanese comics. We don't have many of these anime comics in the library, but we do have a fairly complete collection of the Street Fighter comics. Again, not terribly unusual - I latched onto Star Trek at that age, so if Street Fighter is what grabs your attention, go nuts. The first sign I got that he really is on the nutty side was when school resumed in January this year and every time I saw Tim, he was wearing a Chun-Li shirt. Tim is at the library every day during the school week due to his parents' schedule, and I never saw Tim in anything but this one Chun-Li shirt. I start to get a little worried, and stop to talk with his mother one day when she arrives to pick him up.  Not meaning to pry, but I've noticed your son wearing the same shirt every day when he comes here for the last couple of weeks. Does he change into the shirt after school or something? Oh, no. Ever since his grandmother gave him that shirt for Christmas, it's all he wants to wear. He throws tantrums when we force him to wear a nice shirt to church on Sundays, and we have to wash it twice a week. Has it occurred to you that Tim might be fixated on this character to an unhealthy degree? I've thought about it, but whenever I try to bring it up, his father just says that as long as Tim doesn't obsess over a man, I should let him be.Not a good sign, but by next week evidently talked some sense into the family because Tim was back to wearing normal shirts. Or so I thought. He starts sulking by himself in a corner of the library when he gets there rather than chatting with his anime club friends. I drop by and ask what's up with Tim. His mom forced him to go on a campout this weekend with his Boy Scout troop. Tim didn't want to go, but his mom said it was camping or doing the chores for all his brothers and sisters during the week. Tim took the shirt, and a couple of older scouts stole it and threw it onto the bonfire.At this point, I'm starting to wonder if I should talk with Tim's mom again - it sounds like she's genuinely trying to help him. But then comes the straw that broke the camel's back. That same week, a high schooler comes in and checks out all the Street Fighter comics. Se's doing a project for her art class on the relationship between anime-style video games and comics or some such. All I can think while checking out these comic books for her is that Tim is going to be very unhappy when he comes in the next day. As predicted, the next day Tim comes in with the other kids, beelines for the comics, and finds all the Street Fighter comics missing.  WHERE IS SHE?!?! Who? And please keep your voice down. CHUN-LI! Someone else checked out those comics. I'm sorry, but they're due back in two weeks. How could you let this happen?! The world is doomed now! I'm sorry? What do you mean? Bison came to me in a dream two days ago! Unless Chun-Li and I get married today, she'll never have my son! He's the only person who can stop Bison!At this point, the yelling has attracted the library supervisor over to see what's going on. Once she sees the kid ramble for a few more minutes about how Street Fighter is totally real and the comics build psychic bridges between those with chi (he apparently did), she calls Tim's mom at work. He's saying what?! He told the pastor two Sundays ago that he knew Street Fighter wasn't real!Tim's mom makes arrangements to leave work early and come pick him up immediately. We subsequently find out that Street Fighter is only the latest comic he latched onto as real, and that his mom has been working for years to get Tim to acknowledge the difference between reality and make-believe. I kinda wish I knew what happened to Tim after that. He stopped coming to the library with the other after-school kids after that, and the anime club seemed to be fine without him.
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Apr 24, 2013 21:27
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Cythereal posted:Re-birth Bless you, goonsir. I thought this thread had finally died, but hopefully this post will bring it back. Also, good on that mom for actually taking an interest and trying. Sounds like that kid has half a chance of turning out normal.
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Apr 24, 2013 22:07
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Cythereal posted:
 Pray the soulbounding away!
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Apr 24, 2013 22:17
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Brightman posted:
To be fair, a priest is far cheaper than a child psychologist.
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Apr 24, 2013 22:35
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Cythereal posted:
Held against the rest of the story, this "I don't care what's going on inside my kid's head as long as he isn't gay" attitude is genuinely haunting. It's like that's the most horrible scenario they can imagine, when the reality is far worse. 
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Apr 24, 2013 23:08
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Excelsiortothemax posted:To be fair, a priest is far cheaper than a child psychologist. This is a real issue. I did a research paper on this topic, and religious leaders of all faiths are called upon to deal with mental health issues very frequently, but most seminaries only require one "pastoral counseling" class. The good ones get more training on their own initiative and refer people with serious problems to a professional. The incompetent ones recommend things like prayer and Bible study that may provide some comfort, but do nothing to address the problem.
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Apr 24, 2013 23:32
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To be fair, I know the pastor in question - I attend a different church closer to where I live, but he's a fairly regular visitor to the library and seems to be a genuinely good guy. I don't think he did the "pray/study it away" thing, but he said that Tim's mom requested confidentiality about Tim's issues and he would respect her wishes.
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Apr 24, 2013 23:39
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Konstantin posted:This is a real issue. I did a research paper on this topic, and religious leaders of all faiths are called upon to deal with mental health issues very frequently, but most seminaries only require one "pastoral counseling" class. The good ones get more training on their own initiative and refer people with serious problems to a professional. The incompetent ones recommend things like prayer and Bible study that may provide some comfort, but do nothing to address the problem. Every Catholic priest I've ever known had enough training to know the difference between "you need someone to talk to" and "you need professional help". They provide the former, and have lists of therapists if you need the latter.
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Apr 25, 2013 00:50
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Honestly, the reason I don't have any stories from growing up about that friend is because the friend in question was me. Not as severe as most cases the thread's talked about (it's been alternately amusing and horrifying reading for the past few days), mostly born from a hyperactive imagination and having few to no friends rather than a troubled home life or anything, and I grew out of it when I got into high school, made a bunch of new friends, finally started getting some respect for my nerdy interests, and generally grew up. Fortunately, my anime phase was brief - I was much more a Star Trek kid. Still, when reading this thread it was hard to shake that feeling of "There but for the grace of God go I" when reading about some of these people.
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Apr 25, 2013 02:36
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Rahonavis posted:Held against the rest of the story, this "I don't care what's going on inside my kid's head as long as he isn't gay" attitude is genuinely haunting. It's like that's the most horrible scenario they can imagine, when the reality is far worse. Wouldn't be surprised if that atmosphere is half the reason the kid has difficulties distinguishing between fact and fiction.
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Apr 25, 2013 06:02
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Cythereal posted:Honestly, the reason I don't have any stories from growing up about that friend is because the friend in question was me. Not as severe as most cases the thread's talked about (it's been alternately amusing and horrifying reading for the past few days), mostly born from a hyperactive imagination and having few to no friends rather than a troubled home life or anything, and I grew out of it when I got into high school, made a bunch of new friends, finally started getting some respect for my nerdy interests, and generally grew up. Fortunately, my anime phase was brief - I was much more a Star Trek kid.  
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Apr 25, 2013 06:28
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If there's anything more I can say for this thread, it's for the well-intentioned people who tried to befriend people like this and tried to bring them down to earth: Don't stop. While some people like this are genuinely mentally ill, like I suspect Denise from the OP is, just as many if not more are simply bright, creative kids who construct fictional worlds and find them safer or more compelling than the real world they live in. Sometimes it's the result of broken homes. Sometimes it's simply a kid who hits the geeky phase well ahead of their peers - I, for example, was crazy about Star Trek and science fiction at an age when most of my peers were still reading children's fairy tales. What brought me, and a number of other people, out of that dangerous disconnected phase was people like you. People who aren't just bullies of a more manipulative bent seeking to "befriend" outcasts still growing up. People who don't latch onto those fantastical worlds and start a devastating feedback loop. If I hadn't met Sam and Sandra and Courtney and the rest of a really good group of people in high school, there's no telling if I would have made it out of that imaginary trap. Many of the kids who do this find refuge in their fictional worlds not even because their home sucks, but because they simply find these worlds more interesting than the real world before them. Escapism is one thing. Entirely forsaking reality for fantasy is another. I can attest that while parents and adults can help, having genuine friends their own age who aren't malicious and yet are willing to draw them back into real life is probably the greatest boon of all at that age. It's an age when many kids are confused or downright hosed up. This is one of the ways for that to happen. So for those who have dragged people like this back into reality, thank you. For those who tried but did not succeed, thank you for being willing to try.
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Apr 25, 2013 14:53
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Cythereal posted:So for those who have dragged people like this back into reality, thank you. This is a nice sentiment and a whole heartedly approve of it. Thank you for saying it Cythereal. You've mentioned several times you were hooked on Star Trek as a child. Did you create an imaginary world full of the characters like Tim? Or did you just obsess over every detail of the show till you even knew the floor plan of the various enterprises off by heart?
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Apr 25, 2013 15:02
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JohnOfOrdo3 posted:This is a nice sentiment and a whole heartedly approve of it. Thank you for saying it Cythereal. You've mentioned several times you were hooked on Star Trek as a child. Did you create an imaginary world full of the characters like Tim? Or did you just obsess over every detail of the show till you even knew the floor plan of the various enterprises off by heart? A bit of both. I noted that I was never as bad as many of the examples cited here, and the main difference is that I always knew Star Trek wasn't real. I was very well aware that my imaginary friend as a kid was precisely that - imaginary - and that Star Trek was a fantasy. I just didn't care very much. As for how I treated it, it was a mix of both options. I liked to imagine an idealized version of myself was actually the captain of a starship and would fill notebook after notebook with scribbles about his adventures. If I'd had access to the internet as a kid, I would have been one of the countless kids writing terrible fanfic. That creative drive has never gone away, really, but I learned to channel it into healthier outlets - I'm the DM for a DnD group, for example, that's actually comprised of well-adjusted people who enjoy getting together every week for soda, pizza, and adventuring in Eberron. I still enjoy talking and writing about fictional worlds and characters, but growing out of my childhood phase was mainly about understanding that the real world always takes priority. As a kid, I simply didn't understand that distinction and how to express my extremely active imagination in a healthy way, and I think the friends I made in high school were key to that. In hindsight, my parents constantly telling me how wonderfully smart and creative I was was not the best thing they could have done, although I know their intentions were good.
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Apr 25, 2013 15:33
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Cythereal posted:A bit of both. I noted that I was never as bad as many of the examples cited here, and the main difference is that I always knew Star Trek wasn't real. I was very well aware that my imaginary friend as a kid was precisely that - imaginary - and that Star Trek was a fantasy. I just didn't care very much. This was pretty much exactly how I treated my teenaged imaginary fantasy world. I was too self-aware to not realise that I was obsessing about poo poo that didn't exist, but who gives a gently caress when your mum is all crazy, and school sucks, and boys don't like you, and your friends are all uncool meanies. I spent all my classes scribbling lameass characters under my desk and awful fantasy fiction in the back pages of my exercise books. I no longer care about my inner fantasy worlds nearly so much, but I still delve into them most nights in bed before I sleep. I've done it since I was little. The fantasies are really terrible and fanfictiony and always ongoing, and about as sophisticated as the stuff we're reading about here, but now I can safely regulate it all to the "not as important as real life" section in the back of my brain.
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Apr 25, 2013 15:57
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For my own stuff I tend to do all the imagining when I'm listening to music on my iPod at home. I'll stand in the middle of the room and pace up and down, acting out some of what the characters are doing. This has the side effect of making most of these imagination sessions into something resembling a music video or an anime's opening credits because of the music I'm listening to or because a lot of the time it's fight scene I'm imagining. Where the characters are cool and badass and stuff. It's mostly harmless but I don't half feel embarrassed when someone walks in on me doing it and I haven't realised it. The worst part is when there's a mirror in the room. Since then I can make all the faces the characters are making as well and see them, which makes it easier to imagine and worse when someone's been standing there for a minute watching me pull faces and swing my arms about like I had a sword I guess I was lucky growing up in that I had a twin brother so I didn't need an imaginary friend and this helped to keep me grounded in reality. It's only been recently where I had trouble keeping a grip on fact and fiction thanks to Kry. So I guess it balances out.
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Apr 25, 2013 16:22
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I think another factor may be that some fantasy worlds are healthier than others. My mother was and is a huge Trekkie (not the unhealthy kind, though), so it's what I was surrounded with as I grew up. And you know what? Star Trek generally extols positive lessons and ideas. I grew up idolizing Data and Odo (I was growing out of that by the time Voyager came along) - characters who were different, yet valued and respected. People didn't dismiss their problems as something normal people didn't care about. Granted, I had more than a few nightmares about the Borg growing up, but Star Trek sold me on the idea that everyone, even those who don't fit in, deserves respect. No one is intrinsically evil. Exploring strange new world is a good thing. Even Deep Space Nine showed that yes, good people can have problems and conflicts with each other, but they can work together to resolve those conflicts, and you can disagree with a friend about some things but still be friends. Apologies if this isn't accurate, but what I've seen of a lot of anime suggests a distinctly less healthy view of the world.
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Apr 25, 2013 17:47
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In anime fantasty land, every day is Yasukuni Day!
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Apr 25, 2013 18:11
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JohnOfOrdo3 posted:For my own stuff I tend to do all the imagining when I'm listening to music on my iPod at home. I'll stand in the middle of the room and pace up and down, acting out some of what the characters are doing. This has the side effect of making most of these imagination sessions into something resembling a music video or an anime's opening credits because of the music I'm listening to or because a lot of the time it's fight scene I'm imagining. Where the characters are cool and badass and stuff. Guilty as charged. At times I wish I almost wrote down some of the stuff and dialogue I keep imagining because maybe some day I'd be able to make something out of it. But yeah, I tend to have a really over-active imagination at times and I just generally craft dialogue and scenarios in my head, sometimes music helps along that. I've never had any real issues with separating between real and fantasy worlds and I've never really ever encountered anyone who has that issue. At worst I had an old female classmate who wanted to join Delta Force after playing the Land Warrior game and was writing a self insertion fanfic alongside another friend of hers but otherwise she was pretty normal and nothing odd about her. Guess I've just never been (un)fortunate enough to really encounter anything worthy of a horror story nor really done anything worthy of one either.
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Apr 25, 2013 18:50
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Cythereal posted:I think another factor may be that some fantasy worlds are healthier than others. My mother was and is a huge Trekkie (not the unhealthy kind, though), so it's what I was surrounded with as I grew up. And you know what? Star Trek generally extols positive lessons and ideas. I grew up idolizing Data and Odo (I was growing out of that by the time Voyager came along) - characters who were different, yet valued and respected. People didn't dismiss their problems as something normal people didn't care about. Granted, I had more than a few nightmares about the Borg growing up, but Star Trek sold me on the idea that everyone, even those who don't fit in, deserves respect. No one is intrinsically evil. Exploring strange new world is a good thing. Even Deep Space Nine showed that yes, good people can have problems and conflicts with each other, but they can work together to resolve those conflicts, and you can disagree with a friend about some things but still be friends. This is something that I feel probably helped keep the handful of us that were leaning towards being That Guy mit der Star Trek grounded. For all the fantastical bullshittery and being about aliens and space, science fiction used to be more than just action setpieces with cool UI. The genre was, for a long time, used by its creators more as a lens to explore problems that are part of actual reality through an 'inoffensive', non-confrontational lens. More allegory than anything. There are science fiction settings and stories that still do this, and the effect isn't purely limited to that genre. But it's closer to the surface with the first three Star Trek series, which is what I was watching when I was growing up. It probably says something that to this day that particular series' ideas and concepts inform the way I write and think. Whereas Cytherial's idealized version of himself sat in the big chair at the top, the one that I built was down in Engineering. Because of being a little too attached to a TV show, I decided I wanted to spend my life fixing important things. So I became a computer scientist, and eventually a gunsmith.
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Apr 25, 2013 19:37
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Exit Strategy posted:This is something that I feel probably helped keep the handful of us that were leaning towards being That Guy mit der Star Trek grounded. This is kind of off-topic, but what's with the random German thrown in here?
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Apr 26, 2013 01:29
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Dick Burglar posted:This is kind of off-topic, but what's with the random German thrown in here? I irritate linguists as a passing hobby.
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Apr 26, 2013 06:39
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Cythereal posted:I think another factor may be that some fantasy worlds are healthier than others. My mother was and is a huge Trekkie (not the unhealthy kind, though), so it's what I was surrounded with as I grew up. And you know what? Star Trek generally extols positive lessons and ideas. I grew up idolizing Data and Odo (I was growing out of that by the time Voyager came along) - characters who were different, yet valued and respected. People didn't dismiss their problems as something normal people didn't care about. Granted, I had more than a few nightmares about the Borg growing up, but Star Trek sold me on the idea that everyone, even those who don't fit in, deserves respect. No one is intrinsically evil. Exploring strange new world is a good thing. Even Deep Space Nine showed that yes, good people can have problems and conflicts with each other, but they can work together to resolve those conflicts, and you can disagree with a friend about some things but still be friends. Counter-point: You basically just described that pony show.
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Apr 26, 2013 07:01
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I am a tremendous, human-shaped anus who does not post in the correct threads.
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Apr 26, 2013 07:33
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Cythereal posted:Star Trek generally extols positive lessons and ideas. There's also the underlying theme of pursing science in Star Trek and some other sci-fi. It's almost like a built-in escape hatch: It practically shouts "Want this to be real? Make it so!" (If you'll pardon the expression.) quote:Apologies if this isn't accurate, but what I've seen of a lot of anime suggests a distinctly less healthy view of the world. Some anime & manga is just a medium for telling stories like any other. Some (too much) is just pandering to an unhealthy world view. Some both panders to and makes fun of that unhealthy world view. And some straight up lays bare the problems with it all. (Aku no Hana, "The Flowers of Evil," if you're interested and can handle the rotoscoping.)
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Apr 26, 2013 10:05
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Corridor posted:Counter-point: You basically just described that pony show. But I think the difference is that Star Trek was a show intended for maturer audiences. While yes, it was categorised as a Nerd show, it was getting an intended audience in the correct age range. The lack of dedicated forums for the fandom meant that it's members could never fully secularise itself from outside opinion. Leading to a more psychologically balanced fan base. Some did go off the deep end yes. But the lack of inter-fan communication left them as isolated instances rather than receiving encouragement from others like them. The Pony Show is different in that it's fandom feels threatened by the very nature of what they're doing. They are not the 'intended' audience, and are instead getting obsessed with a show for young girls. Which means that they'll try extra hard to make people realise they actually don't care about outside opinion (which they actually really do, hence the sweaty zerg rush which happens whenever someone insults the show). The nature of the fandom also means that they'll invite in and accept anyone. Regardless of if they're a creepy fucker to begin with. The twisted aspect of the fandom will then only further excentuate the creepy that was already there.
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Apr 26, 2013 10:36
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When I was still a teenager I tried very hard to believe in these special realities because as an only kid in a crap home situation with few friends and a 'Forever Alone' mindset, being loved, accepted and adored by people just beyond sight was really appealing. I couldn't ever get rid of my grounding to reality though, and I think that's a very good thing. As an adult I still get embroiled in my imagination sometimes and, sometimes, it is ridiculous fanfictiony bullshit. I tend to engage in these fantasies when on walks, listening to music on my iPod. A popular one is imagining I'm Commander Shepard from Mass Effect, doing all kinds of badass stuff. Sometimes when I'm at my most anxious, I play a little pretend, and that helps me out of it. (What would Shepard say or do here? If I want to be more brave and decisive, I will say and do that.) I don't really think I'm Cdr Shepard, it is just like watching a TV show to me with those silly fantasies, and what I feel is a useful role model. I've stopped one or two panic attacks from happening with these flights of imagination.  A place for everything, and everything in its place.
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Apr 26, 2013 14:13
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uglynoodles posted:What would Shepard say or do here? Renegade Shepard or Paragon Shepard? 
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Apr 26, 2013 15:28
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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Aw, there's nothing wrong with an imagination. I frequently have train journeys of 5+ hours, and I enjoy the time to just imagine stuff. The difference comes in knowing that it's not real, and shouldn't be a focus of life. I mean, I love horror stuff. Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to be part of making horror movies. What I didn't do is tell people that I'm soulbounded with Michael Myers, or Jason, or something. I've known weird people, but it seems like it takes a special kind of weird to think up the stuff in half of the stories.
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Apr 26, 2013 15:32
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