Hi, It's been a while and I felt like saying why I've been away and what's been going on. It's been something that I've thought about daily for almost two years now and I feel like making a post explaining everything that happened would help to move on. I've made posts about it in the past, usually at times when I was being harassed, however I wanted to make a post with my own thoughts not in response to anything in specific.
This will contain a lot of talk about things I've done wrong, internet drama, and mental health. It's a lot but it would mean a lot to me if you read through it. A handful of people will be mentioned anonymously, do not send any harassment or hate to any of them.
2 months ago, someone anonymous tracked down as many different discord servers I was in, in an effort to get me banned from them and as many other places as possible. Some servers let me stay after I explained the whole situation, however some didn't. I was banned from Inkipedia for "Offsite sexual harassment of a minor" and was told that they had no interest in hearing any "explanations or potential nuance". Since it was anonymous (and I believe they weren't involved or present at all during the situation), it's likely that this is a long game of telephone and what was said was twisted into something very different from what happened two years ago.
A lot of people who follow me probably know what happened, but if you don't, about two years ago while I was 19, I made friends with someone who was 15 on a server where everyone was pretty close due to a shared interest about Splatoon. We almost exclusively talked about it, and those talks about fandom became NSFW, and for a few days NSFW art was shared as well.
At the time, I was still an awkward teenager with bad social skills and had past experiences around 15 with having NSFW discussions with people older than me, as well as at the time I had similar discussions with people my own age. When repeatedly expressing my own discomfort in this situation I got confirmation that it was okay. There was nothing directed at each other, and it was just fandom discussion, and I never attempted to pressure him into anything.
However, even with these excuses in my head at the time, I realized that this wasn't appropriate, so I cut ties with him and told everything that happened to other members of the server, as well as my close friends, in order to stop it and make sure it wouldn't happen again. I was banned from the server and two others closely related to it, and I think this was fair.
As I've said before and I'll say it again: I am sorry to the person involved for everything that happened, and for leaving without giving any sort of explanation as why I wanted to stop talking. We were friends, and I feel it still hurts to have someone disappear like that.
One of the people I talked to, a moderator of the server, threatened reporting me to the police if I didn't see a therapist, which I later found out they actually did, though it didn't lead to anything. Roughly a week later, A callout post was made and had a lot of missing information. After the poster agreed to hear my side, they took it down, stating they regretted how they handled the situation.
About 5 months later, another post was anonymously made accusing me of being unsafe to be around because of my actions and that I emotionally manipulated him. The post also contained a document with screenshots of our chats, which contained discussion and art of "proship" topics, which while I'm open about being into some of these topics now, at the time this was against my will. The post used this to stir up ship discourse to make more of an argument that I'm dangerous, despite the screenshots showing the other person engaging with it as well.
I was accused of "harassment and begging for proof to be taken down" for the time that I talked with the person who made the first post, who agreed to talk with me and made their own decision to take down the post.
After I made a public response, someone else made another response to it. This post is the one that was being shared around two months ago. It made a lot of false claims, such as saying that the only accusation was that I sent NSFW art to a minor, when I was accused multiple times of grooming and manipulation, as well as saying I was shifting blame onto him, by posting a screenshot of my response which cropped out me saying explicitly "this wasn't his fault".
There was some back and forth, and all of those posts are still up. For a few days I left an explanation for people to read, and when I felt that most people had the chance to read it, I resumed posting as normal.
After this, basically anyone who I talked to or barely interacted with, including my ex girlfriend who I hadn't talked to for months, got anons asking them if they knew about the "ranidspace drama" for weeks.
I've avoided until now saying how I've felt. I hurt someone badly, but was around this point where I believed it stopped being about helping him/others and more about virtue signalling. In a short amount of time, so many people who I liked and talked with, who were followed me or who I was fans of all just switched on me instantly and I was blocked without hearing anything I had said or had to say. A lot more people who weren't involved at all, with even less information about the situation, began to make posts about me as well, twisting things further to make me look worse.
This was all over a year ago now, but every moment since then I've been thinking about it. I've gotten extremely paranoid about being watched and having anything I said being used against me (random people who weren't involved did this multiple times). Every moment here felt like ticking time bomb; like every time I did anything there was a chance it would all come back, and more people would hate me.
It was around this time where I also had a lot of issues about my sense of self. I felt like I wasn't a person. I felt like nothing I made had any worth. I felt like the only thing that defined me was what happened with him.
Bringing this back to two months ago, I joined another discord, and I felt comfortable enough to vaguely mention what happened for the first time in over a year. It was after this where someone on the server attempted to get me kicked out from everywhere. Since I was vague, it was likely the only thing they knew about it was the posts with missing/false information. I was even shown by the other admins which post they were sent, the one mentioned earlier.
I'm not going to lie, at that point Splatoon was the only thing I cared about. It was never a good idea to hinge all my self on one thing, but I cared about it so fucking much. Some times I just spent hours a day coding stupid little tools and things just to help other people with whatever. To show off or preserve things that people wanted to see. Most of my art, my ideas, my presence, and everything centred around it. In the span of a few hours it went from feeling like I have people that care about what I do, to being barred from it all and being told by people who I looked up to that they want me gone from everywhere.
I shouldn't have, but I reached out, multiple times, just seeing if I could just, sit down and talk it out, and be given a chance but I wasn't given anything. It hurt to finally open up and to be punished for it and given no chance to even explain myself.
I gave liquidcrystalsky to someone else and stopped using tumblr entirely. Unlike other times, this time I genuinely had no intention of coming back. I felt my only option was to just stop with everything. I removed myself from every online space I could, I planned to leave my friends, I started selling all my belongings and I stayed away from any of my interests and started rationalizing hating everything which I liked before.
I could make a new account and pretend to be someone else and like nothing happened, but I can't. I can only be myself, or nobody.
So. I'm going to try and be me again. I want to say all of this because, it was a shitty mistake I made, but it's a part of my actions I can't go back to undo. So I just want this all to be out there and publicly share how past events have been affecting me. Thank you