cw everything you can fucking imagine.
i just wanted to make a cute little video game this month. for my own game jam. i wanted to make a little thing that people could enjoy. because i like making little things that people can enjoy. it is my favorite thing to do.
instead
i get repeatedly derailed by the mob of people who has been stalking us and breathing down our necks for coming up on six years. sorry, no, it's been over a decade; they just happened to become especially empowered six years ago.
i've been called a pedophile more times than i can count. i've been told my first cat's death from an incurable illness was my fault. i've been told it's good our pets are dead because at least they're away from us. i've had at least three of my home addresses posted despite two moves and a name change to get away from them. i've been told i belong in jail. i've lost so many nights, so many days. i'm expected to answer for things i said twenty-three years ago that i already answered for thirty times, to people who don't actually care, they just want to smugly feel better than someone else, just like i did twenty-three years ago. every form of abuse my spouse's horrendous ex inflicted on them is cast as their fault; every form of abuse he inflicted on anyone else is also cast as their fault.
i've had an acquaintance reveal they ERPed rape revenge fantasies about my spouse and then try to be my friend again. i've had someone try to manipulate us against each other for microscopic social clout and then go cry to kiwi fucking farms that they experienced cult abuse at our hands because they were restricted to only one discord channel. i've gotten to hear about someone consider dropping their own corpse on our lawn as punishment for saving their life but also not including them in the RP or something. a successful voice actor occasionally has someone ask about the time he kept asking a 15yo about their genitals and he deflects by insisting my spouse made it up, somehow, and links their kf thread.
i've seen rinky-dink press about our games taken down because someone said Mm Dont You Know Who They Are. i've been banned from spaces without question because "one of our members is uncomfortable". friends have just vanished silently. people who do or say or make interesting things will follow me, then block me when one of their peers notices. my spouse backed a game they liked on kickstarter, enough to get a cameo in it, which was then edited out when enough people objected. we are cut off or outright erased at every opportunity.
and all the meanwhile this little mob of shitheads jeers and jabs, constantly, endlessly, forever, about how abusive we are, armed with a pile of stories from people mad that we didn't want to be friends with them any more after they treated us poorly. i can't look at tags for any of our work, anywhere, to see if anyone likes it, because they're full of vitriol. if i post anything that gets too much attention then i have to start watching the comments to filter out the ones calling me a child rapist. (what child? they never say.) i'm wary of getting too close to anyone because one too many acquaintances has decided to throw a tantrum by giving everything we ever said in confidence to the people who've been torturing us for a quarter of our lives. i stopped blogging because the last thing i ever want is to be exposed to a large crowd of complete strangers on a discussion board. i am discovering all new psychological disorders i hadn't previously heard of because i have their symptoms now.
but they are obsessed... with announcing... how abusive... we are. and when they can't justify it, when the well runs too dry, they just make some shit up. ash makes a zine with friends? that's equivalent to a megacorp extracting free labor from its fans. people in discord are nice to newcomers? well that's lovebombing, a cult recruitment tactic. we ask someone to answer for their cruelty? that's a one-sided screaming session, maybe even another cult tactic; accountability only applies to us, after all. and i cannot tell you how many logs and screenshots have been carefully cropped at just the right spot, how many sob stories have conspicuous gaps in the middle. ash scolded me for my misogynist jokes absolutely no reason, what a bitch abuser!
and we are fucking nobodies! i release a microscopic video game every few years that maybe a thousand people play. ash does a webcomic that they hardly even post to its own website any more, preferring to keep it to a discord with maybe a few dozen active regulars. we are not viral twitter nazi influencers using our clout to build an ethnostate. we are two fucking yahoos who want to make art maybe you will like.
the guy who did ERP about us as literal children and wove in a kink he knew i like, even did ERP about straight up the most blatant racism you can imagine, is doing just fine and no one cares or remembers; meanwhile i can't join a mutual friend's discord because i can't stomach being around him. the moderator we banned for doing an actual sex crime continued to hang out with someone else who left in a huff and still posts two years later about how we're an abuse factory. a former kiwi farms poster got really upset at me because i didn't wholeheartedly accept their apology for posting about how i groomed someone over a medium i'd never even used. only we are subjected to this treatment, only we are expected to be endlessly infinitely accountable (i.e. tortured) for every imaginable sin. everyone else can apparently just go "haha whoopsie" and it's like it never happened, and they get mad at you if you act otherwise.
and still it goes on. sometimes they will insist there is some condition that will make them stop, but if it ever happened, they would simply come up with a new one; all that matters is that they can pretend their cruelty towards us is our own fault. they feed on the suffering they create, and they will not stop until we are dead, and then they will dance on our graves. and all the while they will pat themselves and each other on the back for what good people they are — for standing up to abuse.