About twelve years ago, I was involved in an anime fan community. This was back during the days when places like Homestead offered fairly good website building stuff for free. People would build sites dedicated to characters from various anime series and most often, the sites would be fan parodies of the characters. There was always a lot of creativity to this. People would do artwork based on how they saw the characters. They would write poems, fanfiction, and all kinds of slash. Needless to say, it was the kind of thing I was completely drawn to.
Usually people who hosted these sites would link up to some kind of message board. And while these message boards started out as just general discussion about the site or the anime, it eventually became a place for roleplay. People who liked the fansites would create their own characters who worked within the context of the universe the web designer had built. Whole communities rose out of this. You'd find 20 or 30 people all working together to create cyber towns, worlds, and dramas.
The message board I was connected to was created by a girl with a subversive sense of humor and great drawing skills. She would roleplay both as herself and as the anime character for whom she's created the site. If it seems strange that she would roleplay her own self, keep in mind that there are always differences. In the world created by our collective imagination, she became the keeper of her anime character, his jailer, if you will. Pretty much the only person his evil self feared.
For a couple of years, it was a lot of fun. Our imaginary town grew into a kingdom. There were wars and invaders. We had enemies (usually asshats who'd been banned from the message board for being asshats). When I think about this imaginary land, I can tell you about it street by street. In my head, I can see the hill above the city where the Devil lived. I know where the smurf refugees stayed. I can even remember which island you had to avoid because its where we banished all the zombies (and later where we banished all the necrophiliacs who wanted to 'liberate' the zombies). I know where all of my characters lived. And I can even tell you where they were when things started to fall apart.
In the real life of the creator of the website, she met a guy. He was several years older than her, into Star Wars, and cosplay. She loved the fact that he was into that stuff, because she was as well. She saw them as equals. He fancied himself far more creative than she was, although to this day I call bullshit on that.
The rest of us, every single one of us, hated him.
Well, we didn't at first. At first, he really didn't interfere with anything at all. He was just this guy she was dating. She'd mention him every once in a while and we were all happy for her. The rest of us had lives outside of the message board too (well, most of us) and it was great that she'd met someone.
But then one day, she let him join our group. Suddenly he wanted to be a part of everything. He had some lame characters (one of them was a ninja, the other one was based off of a movie icon he liked) who really didn't mesh with the rest of us. At first, we tried to find ways for everyone to mesh, but he just didn't seem to understand the hodgepodge of what we were. In this imaginary world, pretty much anyone could wander into town. It was an accepted rule of the game and this asshole would try to argue with us about context.
He also wanted to be part of all the major plot lines. If someone was causing problems or if slavers were trying to capture all the catgirls (again), he would feel he had the right to private message everyone about how his characters should be the ones to solve the problems. He would complain about the high levels of perversion. He would get jealous when other people would flirt with his girlfriend's characters.
In private party chats, where six or seven of us would gather away from the main group, we began to deal with our hatred of this man by pretending to assassinate his characters. One of us would pretend to be one or the other of his characters (usually the ninja. We really hated that damned ninja.) and we'd give this character exaggerated (though only slightly, because damn he was annoying) characteristics of how he usually acted. He would say things that would piss us off. And then, our usually peaceful little gathering of Pokemon, catgirls, fairies, and vampires would roleplay out ripping this bastard to shreds.
The pretends deaths would never be simple. Every time we killed him, we'd find new and inventive ways to do it. Usually his body parts would get tossed to the necrophiliacs when we were finished. Well, one time we baked him into a cake and pretended that his other character ate it. Then we killed that one because we worried he'd become doubly annoying.
I have rarely laughed as much as I did when we would pretend to kill this man's characters. There was so much glee in a community uniting to rid themselves of the damned ninja who kept trying to interfere with us. I was always amazed that even the sweetest and most adorable of our group would take delight in making this happen. Seriously, we all hated him.
This many years past the point, I think I know what this made us so happy. A lot of us had stepparents that had caused us a lot of pain when we were younger. When she brought him into our happy little imaginary world, it felt the same. We knew the signs. And he did all the stuff that bad stepparents do to make the situation worse. Instead of just accepting the situation, the family, for what it was, he felt he had the right to question it, fix it, and change it for the better. He did not.
See it wasn't just the mere fact of his existence that made us so angry. Had he just roleplayed in as some character who said hi from time to time and kissed the character of the webmistress, none of us would have cared. Over time, he probably would have been accepted and even welcomed. Instead, he tried to take over and make it all about him. When that didn't work, he made sure it all fell to pieces.
The lesson here? Ohh, there are a lot. But let's start with some advice for stepparents. When you become part of someone else's family, lay low for a while. Let them be themselves. Let them get used to you. Don't question everything that goes on, because you're going to come off as judgmental. Don't assume that just because this person you love has welcomed you that everyone else has as well, or even that they have to.
Most of all, never ever think that the best way for you to fit in is to start picking things apart and changing them to suit you. You're the person coming into an already established situation. You need to learn to flow with it, not the other way around. If that just isn't in your personality, then perhaps it's best that you stay away from this.
I think it's also important to think long and hard before you ask someone to give up something for you. If you read the blog, then you know that I believe this is almost always wrong to do anyway. However, it seems to be pretty common in relationships, so clearly I'm in the minority here. So, if you are asking someone to give up something for you, if you really love this person, then you need to give this a lot of thought. Sure, you think you know what you'll gain if they give it up, but what are they losing? How happy did this make them? How much of what attracted you to them is tied to this thing? What are you really asking them to sacrifice?
You see, our frustrations and fears about this guy had merit. Only a few months after the asshole boyfriend joined the group, the webmistress announced that she needed to concentrate on other things and would be shutting down the website. I really don't think anyone ever told her about our secret pretend killings, but I'm fairly sure both she and her boyfriend got the hint that we hated him. In a private chat during the last days, she told me that he didn't feel comfortable with the message board and it was becoming a source of a lot of fighting for them. She opted for him instead of staying with her creation. I'm sure many people would see that as the practical thing to do. I, of course, do not.
The rest of us tried to keep in contact. For a while we did, but without our collective imaginary land to hold us together, we eventually parted ways. I'm still in contact with some of them and we really don't talk about the old board. I think the way it ended still leaves a bitter taste in our mouths.
In my mind, I sometimes allow myself to walk down those imaginary streets. The world is mostly empty now, a ghost world of a once thriving culture. In the far distance, you can hear the groan of a zombie. Maybe some stray music from bands who were so bad that the fact that no one is in the audience is no different for them than it ever was.
A lost world. A fragmented culture. All destroyed because someone allowed themselves to be manipulated by someone who felt threatened that worlds could exist without him.
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