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Also voting for Chronological Order and I'm glad you went forward on this from the Fandom Secrets thread. I also love your drawings! I too had a similar experience around the same age and had some of these loser friends until college. Thank God myself and a couple others were sane and mature enough to cut those cancers from our lives. For as socially awkward as I once was I never thought I was a goddess from another dimension where anime characters loved me.
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Oct 21, 2011 03:14
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I appreciate your sharing this given you don't usually talk about it. Because I don't usually talk about my experiences with my own "Denise" either, but holy gently caress if it wasn't the same cycle of just nodding and thinking 'ok, this is stupid but whatever' and not getting out of a broken, poisonous friendship because I was a stupid teenager/young adult. I feel better knowing I'm not alone in that past, and how 'normal' I really was, even as a socially backward mopey-nerd. Apollodorus, I've never heard of the Brontës keeping those 'role-playing journals,' what's a good resource about that?
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Oct 22, 2011 04:01
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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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Panzerschwein posted:What's green and slimy and smells like bacon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplexus I used to be very guilty of 'ostracizers are evil' until I was in my early 20s - oh, I'd be such a cruel person for just walking out on them, I'd be devastated if they did that me, maybe they'll get better...I have exactly two long-term friends from my teenage years, and both times we broke away from the mutual group we knew because the rest were these same broken losers that I'm relieved I wasn't alone in knowing, growing up. The guy who said we were all 'deities' over space or matter or time; the girl who said she was astrally taking classes at the X-Men's school; the kid who thought he was an invincible anime and walked in front of a moving truck to prove it (he miraculously was just bruised up, so maybe he was an anime). My own 'Denise' was a girl I knew through high school and college: unfortunately horse-faced, horrid hygiene, 'Wiccan', and eventually furry. When we first met at 15 I thought something was legitimately wrong with her, like a learning disability or something. I hated the way she was bullied, I hated being bullied, and figured heck, maybe in friendship we could support one another. And in some ways it helped, but in looking back all these years later I don't think she ever wanted help. There was something about the roundabout way all attention came back to her and her fantasies - the disingenuous handling of family and friends no matter how often we paid for meals or endured her madness - even now it makes me a bit angry to think about. Uglynoodles' story of Denise refusing to help out because she was saving for Dollfies brought that back a little. At one point she made a suicide attempt (sideways with a butter knife) that still scared her parents enough to commit her for a couple weeks. She hated it, but at the same time being seen by mental health professionals and getting prescribed treatment changed her for the better. She bathed, she took her medicine, she paid attention to classes, she got a part-time job. She honestly seemed as if she'd overcome her issues...then she recognized that she would have to deal with this for life. It was easier to be lazy, to claim disability and to pretend fairies were speaking to her than it was to work at being a productive member of society. She refused to see therapists, would only take herbal medications and her hippy, milquetoast parents decided they'd rather deal with her being harmlessly crazy at home, cat ear headband in her unwashed hair, horse tail pinned to her ratty peasant skirt, dutifully caring for her seven stuffed animal 'children' (who were also horses and sometimes cats).
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Nov 11, 2011 23:35
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Be well, uglynoodles! As for Pamela, I always call it the Twilight of its day.
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Nov 15, 2011 03:09
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Turpentine Caz posted:Sometimes when I got into a screaming match with mum or was really hideously upset I'd get the sense of me telling me to shut up and stop being an idiot, if that makes any sense. As in there were two of me, and one was above it all and thought the other was an idiot for getting caught up in all this emotional stuff. Sometimes when I wanted to break something out of frustration I'd stop and not do it because I told myself not to. I still don't know how normal this is. Can anyone chime in with comment as to whether they've experienced it? Like RyuujinBlueZ I experience a lot of inner-dialogue involving personal difficulties with 'another'; when I'm depressed, upset, guilty, questioning my behavior in situations, those sort of things, I've found it makes the best sense to examine myself through inner conversations with (embarrassingly enough) fictional figures I admire. I think over time they've come to represent certain ideals I strive for. I know they're not real, I never physically hear their voices or think I'm soulbonded with them. Those 'conversations' are tools of self-confidence and self-discovery with positive outcome and do NOT replace going to my actual family and friends for help and advice.
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Dec 1, 2011 05:41
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zombiepanda posted:I was looking for something to wear, when suddenly we all heard a familiar sound coming from the kitchen:  Stories like these make me want to hammer the Five Geek Fallacies into the heads of every 12-year-old and up potential nerd until they learn not to hang around with creeps like this. I had to keep referring to your first paragraph - 'last year of high school.' This disgusting creep was 17-18. I can't begin to wrap my head around the concept of someone that malfunctioned who doesn't have a legitimate mental problem. I have to tell myself that because the alternative is too terrible to bear. I want to pretend the last sentence never happened.
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Feb 7, 2012 06:51
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We froze up and started whispering like "is he seriously masturbating out there? Wtf!!" When we went out there, he was sitting on the couch trying to look natural, so we left.
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bringmyfishback posted:Anne Rice is loving crazy. Also, she apparently had some feud with Poppy Z. Brite. It's as if a significant portion of an entire generation looked at Rice's/her characters' behavior and deemed it acceptable because she was a respected, published author instead of taking her for a mad person or a genuine performance artist. Can we replace 'Rice' with 'Hussie' referring to people 20 years my junior (there are people 20 years my junior oh God  )?
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Jan 3, 2013 22:14
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:According to Facebook, one of my friends from high school (by which I mean "a girl who was in a lot of my classes and got on reasonably well with", we were not close) has a son named Lestat. He is 3 or 4 I think. I know of more than one Anakin in my extended peer group. I also know of two Graysons (after Robin/Nightwing), a Parker (as in Peter), a few Logans (Wolverine, and unrelated to that name's popularity at the time but specifically after the character), and a Victor - but named for the Fantastic Four's enemy Dr. Doom. Most of my extended peer group are enormous nerds in their thirties. I would be very curious to know in the next few years or decade or so how frequent names like Anakin are, and if there will be enough names that stem specifically from various fandoms that it won't be quite so strange anymore.
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Jan 7, 2013 05:26
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monsteroftheweek posted:But yeah, teenaged girls aren't usually the brightest. I'm really sorry you went through that scary experience and felt you couldn't report it at the time. I think it has nothing to do with intelligence. Most teens understandably are still learning about handling ackward social situations in a healthy way. For girls in particular I think it's more of a cultural socialization to be polite, meek, and silent in social situations - loudly raising objection is 'being hysterical' and dismissed as unfeminine. I'm speaking from an American perceptive; I'm also speaking from my own experiences as a woman who since early childhood was constantly scolded for having a big mouth, something never directed toward male family or peers. I consider myself fortunate I never went through an extreme experience with a bad friend since I definitely knew unstable people in my teens and early 20s, people I should have excised from my life far sooner than later. I don't have any distinct stories, but I'm very glad of this thread because it's clear there are many, many instances of mentally damaged people like Denise and of people like us who had to learn of their existence the hard way. I would be very interested to know if any young psychologists from our generation are considering a long-term study of such people, especially as it relates to fandom and the coming of the Internet.
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Feb 23, 2013 02:31
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The sad brony story reminded me: in the late 90s a friend had a plush animal on the dash of her car and one night at her usual fast-food place had a new guy working the drive-thru window ask her "do you yiff?" She had no idea what he meant and looked it up when she got home. She changed fast food joints after that. I too was ignorant of the term until she shared that story, and that was how we both learned of furries in general. This was important to learn. A few months later leading into Halloween I discovered on a break my car battery died. I called a roadside service so I could drive home. At the time I worked at an accessory shop where we were strongly encouraged to wear the merchandise as a selling tool, so I was in cat ears and tail with my usual slacks/blouse. The service guy who showed up didn't come off as creepy; I think he asked how I liked wearing the cat accessories, but I figured he was just being personable. Later when I left for work it was pouring rain so hard I failed to notice the note taped to my windshield corner. It was in ragged pieces by the time I got home, so I cleaned it up and forgot about it. A week later another note was on my windshield, this time enclosed in a plastic slip from the roadside company. The service guy was really enthusiastic about my willingness to wear ears and a tail because he was a furry, too! To his credit he wasn't gross/inappropriate in the note and I think even said he understood if I didn't call him, but I occasionally wonder if 17-20 year-old me would have contacted him if I had no idea what furries were.
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Feb 26, 2013 01:59
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Queen of Knights posted:Of course she didn’t just stick with out and out medical she also went a step further one night when I was talking about getting my wisdom teeth cut out or pulled. She let me know she can’t get her teeth worked on because, you guessed it, her mouth was too small. And they can’t give her a shot to numb it because they don’t have a small enough dosage for her tiny mouth. Never you mind there are children out there with smaller mouths than this crazy bint who see the dentist but then again what do I know? I guess they just aren’t as special as Cinderella. Needless to say Cinderella is a bit of a hypochondriac and a massive liar. So much more on her lies will come up later in just about every story. As someone assessed to have dreaded 'small mouth' by a real dentist and subsequently had three dental surgeries: no mouth is too small for mint-flavored numbing gel and a drug-filled needle. Do you think she twists her height/size into a 'disability' as a cheap grab for pity, a knowing ploy for sympathy, or is it just her go-to chronic lie as related to overheard health conversations? Also it's a little scary to know this Yuchi subjected that poor Peter Pan face character to stalking. If he's the performer I'm thinking of he's amazing as Peter and doesn't deserve terrible fursona shipping fanart. Ugh, my Magic Kingdom for a Mr. Yuk emoticon.
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Dec 21, 2013 13:27
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The Internet never fails to surprise, but I'm fascinated with pre-Internet sub-sub-cultures and other oddities. Thanks for sharing this, Hibiscus. All the girls-school and discipline reminds me of the character Rosa Coote who appeared in a bunch of Victorian erotica where caning was totally about discipline and not sexual at all, no really guys. I'd be shocked if the whole Aristasia deal wasn't based on reading flagellation stories in 'The Pearl.'
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Jan 1, 2014 18:01
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Hibiscus posted:It might relate to "Super Maria Sisters," her favorite video game. (Not making this up) Was she purposely ignoring the male character or getting her wires crossed with "Great Giana Sisters"?
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Jan 3, 2014 03:00
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Princess, my sophomore year was a bit like your experience, except pre-anime and pre-Internet. Creepy, disgusting ringleader, a pantheon meant to rule the coming century, nebulous spheres of power, it's all familiar. I thought maybe they were just REALLY into their made-up D&D campaign, but nope! I remember five or six of us on a party phone line while the leader 'guided' me on a ~~~spiritual journey~~~ through magical realms to determine what my secret power was!  All it was was just throwing out descriptions on association, describing the first idea that came to mind based on a series of prompts. I got space - not stars and galaxies and stuff, but the concept of empty, three-dimensional space. I don't have any distinct stories beyond that (sad for the thread, good for my sanity).It was amusing to play pretend, especially when you couldn't afford pricy RPGs, but I lucked out: about six months into knowing these people one of the group called me out of the blue and we got to chatting frequently. I don't remember ever explicitly talking about it, but it was as if they knew it was all insane bullshit and could tell I did too. They're still my oldest and closest friend, so something good came out of the crazy.
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Feb 18, 2014 03:14
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Oh, is that what your old ban reason means? Because if so  vvv Ahhh, OK. Life is strange. SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL fucked around with this message at 15:29 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 14:39
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That story has all the hallmarks of why furries (and other super-fringe geeky groups) have such awful reputations: refusal to confront bad behaviors in the peer group, total disregard for basic social etiquette, and just heinous understanding of sexual behavior and consent, especially to "outsiders." If there's one thing every story about "my experience with a furry" shares it seems to be that total disregard for boundaries coupled with the teller's "I thought this was just an art/mundane hobby thing." Right off the bat I was upset at how she described "furry" to you, but later when you realized she genuinely thought the "offer" was "considerate" it was just sad.
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Jan 10, 2016 16:31
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Camrath posted:Holy poo poo, Kimmaugh is still being mental? I remember hearing about her back when I was first involved with the furry fandom in like 2000.. Some things never change, I guess. Having read your thread and skimming the ED article I thought "I wonder if Camrath knew of her" and welp.
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Oct 3, 2016 02:05
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Camrath posted:I don't think I interacted with her directly but we were both in the same areas of the Internet around the turn of the millennium and even then she had a reputation and a half. I think that's part of what disturbs me the most: some of us came of age and grew up with the Internet, for good or for bad. Most of us, even those who LARPed or were part of toxic fandoms or whatever, grew to realize "hey, this isn't so healthy or fun for my sanity" and found better ways to cope. But this woman is around my age. It's scary and sad to realize there are people who never get that wake-up call. I posted about it way back in the thread but I knew a person like this in high school and early college. They weren't nasty and vindictive like this person, but had delusions that at the end of the day were easier for them to give into than do the work to help themselves out of pushing stuffed toys in a stroller and calling them their "litter" of real-life children who had souls that spoke only to them. They're approaching 40 now, too. 
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Oct 3, 2016 22:02
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 This is godawful. I'm sorry you lived it, but appreciate you sharing it.
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Oct 5, 2016 04:34
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Qwazes posted:Please don't let this thread end in a religion argument... This, please. Scoff all you want, but the issue isn't "religion" or "otherkin" or whatever: the issue is how a chosen lifestyle overcomes a person so greatly they lose all sense of self-awareness or even self-worth. Often it comes from a place of abuse and/or untreated mental disease. It's the last and only way a person copes, and sadly it impacts friends and family around them. I don't know if anyone here has read Prester Jane's threads where she talks about growing up in such extreme evangelical Christianity it's pretty much a cult, but some of that behavior parallels with the extreme things shared in this thread. I do like to laugh at these stories but then I look at the "ask me about LARP" thread where a woman recently shared she realized her daughter was making all the same mistakes she had due to her neglect as a parent. Thankfully they're all getting help but for every person like her who takes ownership of her mistakes there's tons of adults who don't.
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Oct 28, 2016 22:54
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Spiritual marriage to Sephiroth on the astral plane is a symptom of abuse/neglect coupled with potential untreated mental diseases (that are probably also symptoms of abuse).
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Nov 10, 2016 13:39
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Poison Mushroom posted:No one in this thread should be allowed near children. Most of the thread is about kids and teens that posters knew as kids and teens. I don't get your point.
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Nov 30, 2016 15:23
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