Since none of your anons have said it yet, I'll be the one to say it. What your friend went through was fucked-up, and I'm sorry it happened. They didn't deserve to be treated that way, let alone over a meme of all things. May they rest in peace.
I also have to get this off my chest: I've had people over the years wag the finger at me because I "condoned" harassment toward Flynn - who I have never talked to, ever - while ignoring any abuse I or my friends have endured at "the other side's" hands. I don't say the word "abuse" lightly, because being told you and your language should die on Mother's Day probably counts?
Interesting that, in the years these people have been concern trolling, none of them have said, "I'm sorry, what you went through wasn't okay."
Instead, they're quick to say, "Not all of us are like that, though! You can't condemn extremists for what we do! You're tarring us with the same brush!"
If you have hundreds of people calling you an idiot and a coward and a jerk, and strawmanning your points, and making you out to generally be the scum of the earth whose mere presence causes crops to wilt... It's going to mess with your perceptions of who is safe to talk to and who is not.
And if you think that, why are you so quick to believe the worst of me based on what my friends say? I can only speak for myself and my own experiences, but it's like deep down they believe I deserved that type of abuse, and that seriously messed with my head for a while. Coupled with recent break-up with a friend, for a while I believed I was a negative presence in fandom and my absence would only improve things.
There are two dimensions to this: the discourse and the unspoken things said behind the discourse. People only see the former but not the latter.
I've Seen Things, man. Former friends turning on other friends, calling them names, saying they "deserved" it for being dumb. Not just me, but my other friends as well. The walls of text preaching about how we poison the well, and the hundreds of notes that accompany them. The tweets where people who once left glowing reviews on your fanfic now say, "Just thinking about you ruins my day." The insults. The glee at our suffering, real or imagined. The sheer venom in their voices.
That kind of thing sticks with you.
I know I'm not perfect. I know I haven't always treated others with respect during this shitshow, and I apologize for that.
However, if you're so concerned about my sins, how come none of you have ever so much as said "That was fucked-up?" The silence speaks volumes here.
This will probably get me branded as playing the victim, but there's a reason I don't Trust Like That(tm) when it comes to the more virulent IDW stans.
Note the distinction here. I am not talking about 17-year-old Susie who runs a Whisper RP blog and just thinks Surge is neat; I do not interact with Susie and have no wish to. I am talking about those who I have interacted with who have displayed cruel and callous behavior. Who number more than you might think.
Cries of "you're illiterate" are background noise now, simply because I've heard it so many times. Nothing compared to the stuff I sometimes get flashbacks over.
It's like, holy shit man, you're uncomfortable because of the untagged opinions I post on my blog and do not shove into people's eyeballs? Do you get flashbacks, too? Can we be flashback buddies?
It's not that I believe they're all evil extremists, but rather, enough of them have acted That Extreme or otherwise said nothing about the extremism to warrant caution in their presence. For instance, the number of people who called Flynn a "saint" in the comments of a paid Bumblekast with Lavi. To wit, Lavi paid to merely ask Flynn questions and folks still reacted with "How dare you?"
I don't trust people like that because I don't trust them to treat people like people, instead of ideological bludgeons with which to beat me over the head. Besides, I can trust my friends to not have a total meltdown if I post an opinion they disagree with.
If there were IDW fans who were just chill, who didn't disparage the games and come into my inbox or notes to be like "um ackshually"; if collectively, their virulent side didn't generate this atmosphere of coercion under a smothering veneer of uwu-smol-bean-ism, then I'd be more inclined toward a charitable view.
I don't have a problem with those who just live and let live compared to the ones who are actual death-threat senders and stalkers. (One of them legit made an AITA for "calling out an asshole on their lies over my favorite comic book," where Regular People chewed them out for stalking. Predictably, they threw a hissy fit.)
Once bitten, twice shy. As long as people believe I'm some sort of monster, this feeling will persist. And so I take shelter from the rain in the warmth of mutuals' blogs.
Slightly apropos of this, whenever we get into discussions of IDW's mediocrity or the behavior of their more virulent fans, I keep thinking back to that one games fan on Twitter who told me they were going to keep their discussion confined to private Discord servers from now on because the larger fan space was pushing them out.
I just felt so bad for them, man. And that's what I always think of whenever people insist "IDW is canon, just accept it" over and over. You're pushing people away with this behavior.
Thank you for your kind words, I really appreciate it<3
And yeah you're exactly right. There's a reason I call these comic fans a cult without any exaggeration or hyperbole no matter what anyone else says about how unfair or extreme that label is. Anyone who disagrees that Ian Flynn fans are a cult either doesn't know enough about how real life cults operate, or they haven't seen what I've seen.
I wouldn't have a problem with SatAM/Archie/IDW fans (because they are all the same) if they just stayed in their lane. Fleetway fans stay in their lane. They leave me the fuck alone. They don't obnoxiously shove their negative opinion about the franchise into everyone's faces on a daily basis and demand that it be accepted as irrefutable fact. They simply enjoy what they enjoy and that's it, but Flynn fans don't do that. They don't even seem to enjoy what Flynn writes tbh, they simply hate everyone and everything that doesn't conform to their outlook.
Which just always pretty much boils down to "games bad, the people who make the games bad." And thus they treat actually enjoying the games and respecting the people who make them as blasphemy that must be punished with holy righteous fury.
They feel fully and completely justified in enacting the most depraved violent actions they can possibly conceive of committing across the digital barrier of the internet while feeling fully justified in doing so because we are ontologically evil and deserve it for our unforgivable crime of DISLIKING A FUCKING COMIC BOOK. And then when you have the nerve to CALL THEM WHAT THEY ARE, they have the audacity to act like THEY'RE the victims and I'M being the asshole. They're innocent uwu little beans who just like their little comic and ain't done nothing to nobody, look at how bad you are for what you're saying - blind to their blatant hypocrisy that I'm posting my harmless opinion in my own blog space which they can easily block and THEY are going out of their way to interact with ME.
I have NEVER sent a single negative message to Ian Flynn or anyone else involved with the comic. I have never sent a tweet at Ian Flynn saying "I hate you and I hope you die." I have never sent a Tumblr ask to Evan Stanley saying "you're a bad writer." Anything bad I have ever said about any of them has always been on my own personal blog or video channel which they would either need to go out of their way to look for while ignoring the tools these websites provide to curate their own experience, or because someone else sent it to them. If they ever see any of those bad things and it makes them feel upset, it's not MY fault. I never said it TO them.
Meanwhile I get anon messages from people calling me nasty disgusting evil and telling me to kill myself on a daily fucking basis. And like you said, whenever we publicly discuss the FACT that we receive these messages, the response is ALWAYS to defensively dismiss those anecdotes and assert their own personal moral purity and double down on insisting on our own sinful degeneracy of DISLIKING A COMIC BOOK AND PUBLICLY EXPRESSING IT.
They NEVER express sympathy. NEVER say anything like "I deeply apologize for what you've been through, I understand that dealing with treatment like that for having a contrary opinion can make you feel jaded and antagonistic. But you should still consider that your words and deeds can impact those who have never tried to hurt you and treat them with the consideration that you hope to receive." Which would still be bullshit in that Just Let The Bullies Pick On You And If You Stand Up For Yourself You're The Bad One kind of way, but at least it'd be an effort.
No, it's ALWAYS just more defensive tribalism.
The people that I'm talking about when I say these "nasty disgusting" things are people who would gladly murder me for disliking this comic if they had the opportunity to do so and thought they could get away with it. I know this about them, because they have TOLD ME SO THEMSELVES. And I'm not going to apologize for it and nobody can convince me I'm wrong for doing so. Because, again, what am I doing exactly? Oh yeah, I'm making blog posts and YouTube videos where I express my opinion, posts and videos that NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO READ/WATCH and you can easily avoid by simply blocking me.
Compared to what Ian Flynn fans have done to my friends? I'm the fucking saint here. I will not be gaslit into thinking I'm doing anything wrong. I will not be cowed into submission. I'm not doing anything wrong by expressing my opinion in my own space which can be easily avoided. YOU are doing something wrong by sending me ulterior anon asks trying to coerce me through hook and crook to change my online behavior instead of just fucking blocking me like a normal person. It's not going to convince me to change my ways, it's just going to anger and vindicate me.
There is NOTHING that I have EVER DONE that is anywhere near as bad as what Ian Flynn fans have done to me and the people I care about. And if you think I'm such a bad person, then I want you to think about that.
If IDW fans want me to stop saying nasty disgusting things about them, all they have to do is LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. But they're not going to do that, are they? You know why? Because they're cultists. And no cultists worth their salt can allow blasphemy to be spoken against their Lord and Savior without reprisal. So they're going to keep trying to manifest the ability to stab us all to death through their computer screens, and then shrink away and act like they're innocent victims who never did nuffin to nobody whenever I tell them to fuck off. And I'm going to continue to call them what they are because of it.
I don't expect anyone to feel bad for me or mine. Or care about what I do. Or think it isn't cringe that I'm making a big deal out of dipshits saying mean words on the internet. But I don't care what anyone else thinks. It matters to me. And I'd rather be cringe than unhappy.













