racingwolf

I just was informed that an amazon listing for my mochi Striker plush popped up. THIS IS NOT ME. NOR AM I SELLING IT ANYWHERE. In the future I may sell smaller ones but unless it's from one of my actual accounts which I have listed on my page, it is not me (and I do NOT sell on amazon or anything like that).

The listing uses my pictures and does not even remove the button with my usernames. They are very likely making a bootleg based on my plush design. I'm going to try to take it down, anyone who has experiences with this kind of thing and can help please let me know! Another artist I know is already dealing with this with one of their plush.

So something I was very, very scared of happening has happened and I feel completely defeated and hopeless. I don't want to go into what it is because I don't think I could explain, and the advice I've seen given to others for similar things would 100% make it worse for me. I'm really struggling to find reasons enough to make me want to keep living and I don't know how to explain why. I just feel hopeless and like I'm at the end of the road.

I'm not going to die right now or anything but I don't know how to keep going. And this has nothing to do with my ex-friend; this thing that happened is far, far worse than anything she could have done to me even at her very worst. I'd take all her abuse over this.

I just don't want to see what's coming next, or live with this. I feel lost. Too much bad has happened. I can't deal with this. I feel like it's over for me, not in the sense of dying or anything like that, but in the sense that my last bit of hope is gone. And I'm afraid of what's coming. There's no rock bottom, just further to fall.

The previous journal:

So, it has been nearly a year, and the harassment is still going on, and has ramped up recently.

A quick summary:

I was friends with a person (will refer to her as "Ex-Friend") from 2013-2018. Over the years, things in our friendship got worse and she blamed me/a story I wrote (My ChalkZone fanfic "Cryptic Investigation" which I wrote and finished before ever knowing her) for all her mental problems and basically demanded I be her therapist. I said no, and that the friendship wasn't healthy, and when she wouldn't take no for an answer I ended it (politely). Ex-Friend later commented on DA, despite me saying I wanted no contact. I tried to clear things up (politely) and blocked her here (which I thought I'd done before at the time.) Her and her friends have been harassing me (on anon or with accounts that blocked me) ever since.

Since my last journal, I've discovered some new things.

1. When I made my last journal, someone from the same fandom reached out to me privately saying that they and one of their friends also had issues with this person and their harassment. They also told me that Ex-Friend has also been causing trouble in some discord groups by lashing out and then acting like the victim when people get upset.

1. A while ago, I looked at my Fanfiction.net stats, and found something strange. Ex-Friend still has me on her author-alert list (which I didn't think was possible, since I have her blocked her there). Considering the story the harassment comments claim, this is incredibly strange. They claim that Ex-Friend is "terrified of me" and wants nothing to do with me, yet...through the past years I've noticed that they ALWAYS seem to know when I update a story there...now I know why. And I'm not gonna buy any sob story like "Oh she can't get into FFN anymore and so she sees your updates in her email and it upsets her soooooo much" because...you can block emails from Fanfiction. If Ex-Friend is seeing when I update, it's because she wants to. And considering I always get a hate comment or two within a day of posting...yeah...that's sus. To say the least.

There's a lot more hate comments now, and most of them are on Cryptic Investigation: https://www.fanfiction.net/r/7971903/ (Ignore the Rudy Clone account...that's my friend making fun of the hate comments lol XD)

Ex-Friend and her cronies have also discovered my Comicfury account, and since they can post there anonymously (and I can't block anon comments) they also use that to harass me.

I've had people ask me why I'm not just deleting the comments. The reason for that is, for one...it does no good. I deleted them for nearly two years with no stop in the harassment. Two, I want to keep a record of everything these people send me and when, in case things escalate to a dangerous level (which I have reason to believe it might, and I have MANY more private emails/messages from Ex-Friend to back this up...but any little bit helps).

Because these stupid hate-comments, the "haha your story sucks" generic crap...are just the front to something much darker.

I've wanted to avoid talking about Ex-Friend and the stuff she's done in detail to protect anonymity, and I hope I can still do that...but I will say one thing. She HAS threatened suicide (near the end of our friendship) to try to get me to do what she wanted (be her therapist) and I would not put it past her to do that again or to threaten ME.

Again, there is a LOT more to this story, and I hope I won't feel like I have to tell it, but I may in the future.

Back when I was friends with Ex-Friend, I would occasionally vent to closer friends about the way she treated me, trying to laugh it off like "haha isn't that weird?" and their reactions were "Dude...go to the police." My own therapist strongly advised I cut off contact with this person (which of course I eventually did) and said the situation could be dangerous. It's not just me being paranoid or crazy. And if nothing else, it was EXTREMELY damaging to my mental health to be blamed for all her problems and then forced to try and solve them. To be afraid to say anything to her because I never knew what innocuous comment would make her lash out. I won't let myself be in that situation again.

Back to the harassment itself, and Ex-Friend's continued hatred of me and everything I do...I don't think this is really about my Cryptic Investigation story. I think it’s about control. That she can’t control me, what I write, what I post, whether I talk to her. And she desperately wants that control.

This ain't my first rodeo with bullies (online or otherwise). If anyone here is familiar with Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, the way these people act reminds me of Bendy from the infamous episode of that show. They keep doing shitty things to try to get someone in trouble and then cry and act like the victim. Always. Their main tactic is to paint me as a terrible person and themselves as the good guys.

I know I did the right thing blocking this person. They and their friends are a whole new level of creepy. And when I cut off the friendship (which is "what I did to her" which these comments imply is some terrible thing), I tried to be as nice as possible about it. But I don't think it mattered, she would never have respected my decision no matter what I did. I won't stay in a friendship that makes me unhappy and damages my mental health. I don't exist to serve this person and never will.

She will also never control what I write. If I want to write about a villain who beats up Snap, I will. If I want to write a story where those villains live, I will. I will write whatever the hell I want. And it's laughable that apparently I’m not allowed to write about a character getting beat up (in PG-level, less-intense-than-Path-of-Destiny style violence) but Ex-Friend is allowed to write straight-up torture porn. And apparently my stories make me a morally corrupt person but hers don't have anything to do with her morals. oh ok.

And if this keeps going on for months and years, I'll do more updates. Because I'm not going to be the conveniently silent little victim that cries alone and deletes my stories that Ex-Friend wants me to be.

Okay, in light of some recent events, I really need to come out and talk about some harassment I've been getting that's been going on for years. Because it's gone beyond the point of being scary. It's terrifying.

And I will no longer stay silent while people paint me as a monster.

I've been deleting the reviews and messages they send harassing me, but this time they started painting me as some evil demon for...posting art. You can see the ridiculousness yourself by looking at the reviews for these two (edit: now three) of my stories:

https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13239252/

https://www.fanfiction.net/r/4057710/

https://www.fanfiction.net/r/7971903/

These people are harassing me for blocking a person who, for YEARS, blamed me for their mental illness, and tried to manipulate and guilt-trip me multiple times after the blocking. Before I actually blocked that person, I had suggested ending the friendship because of this person's belief that I caused their mental illnesses, and clearly it wasn't good for us to contact each other. The person was upset, but (with the advice of my family, my therapist, and my friends) I ended it anyway. It wasn't healthy for either of us and the blame she was putting on me was wreaking havoc on my own mental health.

I thought it was clear the friendship was over, but apparently there was a misunderstanding, which I tried to clear up when I blocked her DA account. I thought no contact was best. I still think that, and have only tried to contact her once since, when her friends were harassing and blaming me for horrible things at the beginning of 2019.

One of the reasons I ended my friendship with the person this is all about...is that she often assumed that everything I said or did was malicious, intentional, like I was some evil villain out trying to hurt people. Turns out this spilled over into this person's friends.

Her friends have been harassing me on and off since, insulting me, insulting my stories, commenting on urelated stories, but always in ways that don't allow me to reply (guest comments, or blocking me on accounts they comment with). Never has one actually spoken to me while giving me any way to reply. They are cowards. And I'm sure having me reply would go against their image of me as some sort of "evil demon" or whatever the hell they're portraying me as.

And I realize that the "don't you DARE contact her again" in one of the fanfiction messages (which seemed odd at first) is really them telling me "don't defend yourself." Because I told the person to tell her friends to knock it off at the beginning of 2019. That's all it was.

These people say I'm some villain that was sitting behind my computer, cackling evilly as I post ChalkZone art to a ChalkZone group, specifically to make this one specific person upset, as if my entire life revolved around being evil to this one person. The mental gymnastics of that makes my brain hurt and I'm tired of trying to understand it. I can never understand how the smallest thing can make complete strangers see me as something evil.

I had no idea posting to a public group would be a problem to this person. Of the pictures I posted, only ONE had anything to do with the story she hates, and it had nothing to do with the scene from that story she had issues with. I don't know how I was supposed to know this was a problem. The rules of what I am and am not allowed to do when it comes to this person were never consistent.

And I hate the double-standards. This person's own stories affected ME very badly at times. Yet I did not tell the author to censor herself, did not blame her for my mental problems. I did not tell her she wasn't allowed to post art or stories in certain places. That would not be okay.

And so, I will say to those people, Thornado555 and whoever the hell the other one is:

You can think I'm a terrible person. You can think I'm some evil mustache-twirling villain out to ruin other people's lives. I can't do anything about that; you've decided I'm a monster and nothing I could do would change that, I get it.

But you can't control me.

You can't control what I draw or post. The person upset by my work can unfollow the ChalkZone group if happening upon my art has that much of a negative effect on her mental health. If it is that serious, she should stay away from that group or this site for her own health and well-being. Because you can't always control whether or not you come across certain things on the internet. I say that as someone who has triggers myself.

But I will not be bullied, shamed, or witch-hunted into hiding what I love to do, nor will I be kept from sharing it. If you people can post all the awful, twisted comments you do, I can post my art.

If this person thinks she needs to, she can unfollow all the ChalkZone groups so she doesn't risk seeing my art. Maybe even not looking in the favorites of anyone who likes ChalkZone.

But I will not take the blame, especially when the person upset at me is allowed to post graphic, extremely violent work but I'm apparently not allowed to write about a character beaten up by some villains. This person and their friends can stay away from me, but I won't be threatened to the point where I don't feel like I can share my art.