...Albeit because I feel like I want to put it here rather than in the rather obscure place it was.
I'll give some extra context.
Basically, I've been wanting to return to my art for months--not just the art for streams, like emotes, background art, icon art, stream overlays, etc.
I've been wanting to work on more personal art.
Drawing Chloe.
Drawing kat.
Drawing kat with Bastet.
Drawing other facets.
Revisiting past art.
And, yes...resuming work on my webcomic.
But, I know that realistically speaking, I have a lot going on.
Still, I've been inspired. Art friends from art discords encourage me with art, and I always feel guilty when they ask me for OCs and such that I have so little to offer them.
I recently went and looked at all the 22 pages of Red Hood Rider I made, scanned, and uploaded, but never finished past the fourth.
A lot of it is bad, but a great deal of it is passable or even great, even now. Can easily be touched up and fixed to be viable, usable, doable.
...Yet...despite my passion...
...I have other priorities.
So, I figured I'd fill the people in, the commentors I saw leave comments, by giving them this.
A lot has changed in my life since I set out to create Red Hood Rider which has caused the comic to take a seemingly-permanent, definitely-indefinite-until-otherwise-noted hiatus. There were a lot of factors as to why.
Life stressed me out, in ways that I've since forgotten.
I was suffering from severe burnout, trying to do too many things all at once.
I was suffering from severe art block.
2016 - 2019 are largely a blur to me, and I genuinely don't remember what happened in that timeframe.
I'm pretty sure I began dating my former-girlfriend (who is still a good friend to this day) some time in that timeframe, and they became my top priority for the entire time we were dating.
Then the pandemic hit, and I lost my job.
I came out to my family in June 2021.
I landed a new job, as a Lead Lifeguard (now called Aquatic Lead).
I got very very heavily involved in the twitch stream culture, which pretty much consumed my life. I existed exclusively on twitch and discord, for years.
Fast-forward to 2023, and in a (now-ex-)friend's private friend discord, I began to bond with someone I had known since 2020 in the streaming sphere. I became a good friend of theirs, and vice-versa. We ended up on said ex-friend's server getting dragged into something that I don't want to detail on this blog here, but to keep a long story short; we were trying to do the right thing, and I genuinely believe we were, looking back, more in the right than in the wrong.
Again, not going to go into the details, but I believe a streamer, the streamer we all met through, is a genuinely problematic person. Back in 2023, we caught a bunch of that streamer's red flags, but we believed the streamer to still be a good person, and were intending to do what we did to help them and the community. With all that happened, my belief that "most people are good, all people are flawed" has progressively been put to the test. I hold it true, but the benefit of the doubt I gave to the streamer being among the good-yet-flawed has eroded the more and more I learned by unpacking the events of 2023.
All throughout this year, I've been realizing that despite my belief...some people aren't nearly as good as I thought they were. Namely the streamer I genuinely believe to be a problematic person...but also the now-ex-friend and their partner. They KNEW everything that we did, and didn't do. They KNEW what we had on the streamer, and what we were trying to do. They KNEW we were trying to do the right thing. They KNEW someone wasn't guilty. But they chose their friendship with the problematic streamer over doing the right thing.
They chose gaslighting me over being truthful with me. They tried to manipulate me, gaslight me, and otherwise lied and became culpable in the problematic streamer's actions because they KNEW all of the bad things about the problematic streamer...and chose their closeness with the problematic streamer over exposing the problematic streamer's lies and misinformation. They chose to further frame and otherwise blame a victim of a misinformation campaign.
The problematic streamer abused their position of trust and authority to lie, manipulate, and gaslight everyone into believing that a would-be-whistleblower was problematic. He lied about his friendship with that victim, claiming that they had issues being parasocial with him when HE was the one who initiated friendship with THEM. And he used this to get them banned across our sphere of twitch overnight--with nobody, not a single streamer, listening to the other person, to see if maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding, maybe there was some kind of mistake, etc. Nobody gave them a chance; everyone believed the problematic streamer.
Except me.
Because I was there.
I was one of the eight people involved in exposing the problematic streamer's problematic traits. I was there, so I remember what went on. The ex-friends were two of the eight, I was a third, and the friend I got close to in 2023 on that server was a fourth...
...And that friend needed me. When all of this went down, I knew they would need a friend. I was already in love with them, but I wanted to make sure they survived. They had a close call, having written out a suicide note and planned out how to unalive, but I saved their life with my persistence.
And we further bonded.
And eventually, I confessed my feelings, and they confessed they reciprocated.
So we started dating as of August 16th 2023.
I spent the majority of 2023 gaslighting myself about the events above. I genuinely believed we were in the wrong until this year, until midway through 2024! I thought we were problematic, we were the issue. At my most kind, I thought "everyone involved was a good person, their flaws just interacted in a horrible way that left the situation exploding in the most ugly way possible". But at my lowest, I thought myself a monster, and nearly took my own life in December of 2023 because of that belief.
But, a lot of healing has happened since. The friend I first met in 2020, who I bonded with starting in 2023, who needed my help, who I fell in love with, who I started dating on August 16th 2023? They moved in with me on November 3rd 2023. They proposed to me a month later, on December 3rd 2023 becoming my fiance. We moved in to a place of our own on December 4th 2023.
It's been a struggle. They moved from Michigan to my state of Washington in order to be with me. They haven't had a job, despite searching. And I don't make enough to support two people. Finances have been stressful, life has been stressful, and my job has been soul-sucking, draining the life out of me. I've been burnt out and otherwise unable to have much in the way of free time.
...But...
...The good news is, we are on the upswing.
I am getting married on October 31st 2025 to the love of my life.
Now, I am going to be busy prepping for the wedding until then.
And there's other things I want to pursue and achieve.
I've become a Twitch Affiliate. I've gotten a place with the love of my life. I've gotten a better work schedule. My wife-to-be has landed a job. Things are going well for us and we are going forward...
...But I am going to be too busy for the webcomic for years.
...Yet Red Hood Rider WILL return. Eventually.
I want to pursue writing my novel. A different novel than the one in 2016 (I lost that one when my flashdrive got corrupted, crushing me), but a novel nonetheless.
I want to pursue content creation.
But...when I am married, living with the love of my life, with my novel closer to being made...
...I am planning to return to Red Hood Rider. My goal is before 2028.
I know, that's a 12 year wait for the webcomic. But, with luck, if all goes my way, then I will be in a position where I can finish what I started, over 8 years ago. Here's to hoping!
Now, for readers of this blog, this is nothing new. I've been talking about these events ad nauseum. This blog through all of 2023 and 2024 chronicles my journey remarkably well (especially later on as I became more comfortable), with discord and social media detailing the rest. Blog readers are probably tired of me rehashing the same thing over and over again. You know what went on by now.
And, for that, I do apologize.
But, I felt the need to explain it again.
I'll likely only talk about it going forward for the purpose of therapy, new revelations, things I feel I need to say. (For instance, there's one thing I want to touch on regarding someone who once called me "a good friend", and how I genuinely believe that person is in danger of becoming a victim of this streamer and/or our ex-friends. I want to talk about that more at some point, but not today.)
I've mostly aired out my thoughts. You've likely read them, repeatedly, or at least skimmed them. You don't need me to rehash it again and again and again. So you'll see me talk about it less and less, until I'm not talking about it at all. Still, I apologize. I'm not yet at the "not talking about it at all" stage, which means you once more get exposed to me talking about what went down.
Again, the basic summary as quickly as I can put it chronologically;
An ex-friend had a private friend server for their friends which both myself and my fiance were members of in 2023. Its members all met through a streamer I now believe is problematic.
An artist and vip in said streamer's chat had a rant on March 19th (I was wrong about it being on the 20th, 21st, or 23rd, the screenshot verifies it was on the 19th) and was joined in by a couple of other longtime regulars. To prevent the chat from dominating the venting thread it was in, the server owner (a now-ex-friend) created a subthread for us to let our frustrations out. Eight people ended up involved. The server owner, their partner, the art friend, a couple of other long-time community members, myself, my fiance, and another person not really part of the community.
We collected a long list of problematic traits. We believed the streamer to be a good person at the time, so when we collected these things, we were trying to do so to help the streamer and the community improve, because we wanted to help everyone improve, better themselves, etc.
Separately, on that server, I fell in love with my fiance for the non-venting-hangouts, completely without involvement to the problematic streamer.
Midway through the year, on my birthday, the streamer found out my wife-to-be had been ranting about them. They abused their authority to get my fiance completely removed from basically every space they were in on twitch. They lied, gaslit people, and turned the love of my life into a pariah, when they were a whistleblower who was in the perfect position to expose the problematic streamer as being problematic. It wasn't just that my wife-to-be was a mod for the streamer. It was their relationship beyond them being a mod.
We had all of the information, back in 2023, to expose the problematic streamer as being problematic.
But in our naivety, in our idealism, in our optimism, in our blind faith, we genuinely believed at the time the problematic streamer wasn't problematic. We thought the streamer was human with flaws we could help them with, not realizing just how bad they actually were behind the scenes. Our closeness, our fondness, for the problematic streamer blinded us to how the streamer was in fact problematic.
When the streamer poisoned people's minds and turned the public against my fiance (not a single person heard out my wife-to-be except me, and that didn't change until late 2023 and heading into 2024 when more people began to hear us out), our ex-friends (the server owner and their partner) chose their closeness and friendship with the problematic streamer over being truthful, over trying to do the right thing.
In fact, they knowingly and deliberately tried to gaslight me. They lied to me, they tried to manipulate me, they used every emotional manipulation tactic in the book to try and get me on their side. I made the mistake of believing them unaware. I made the mistake of believing they didn't know what they were doing. I made the mistake of believing they were being accidental in the malice of their actions. I made the mistake of thinking they could have unintentionally been biased.
But they knew.
Jumping ahead a year later when I showed the conversation to my fiance, they pointed something out to me that I hadn't noticed previously, hadn't noticed in a full year of having had the conversation. They pointed out a contradiction which could not have been accidental. They pointed out what was in hindsight, a deliberate lie on the part of the ex-friends who lied to me and tried to cover it up by being vague and not talking about the specifics which would reveal the key contradiction.
They knew it was a contradiction. They didn't care. Because they valued the problematic streamer over their friendship with my fiance, and they valued defending the problematic streamer over honesty, over doing the right thing, over pursuing the truth. They gaslit me, and presumably encouraged the same thing the problematic streamer did, encouraging people to ban my fiance.
They knew everything I did. They chose to lie and protect the problematic streamer and further the problematic streamer's abuse rather than honesty and accountability. They are just as culpable as the problematic streamer. And when the problematic streamer is exposed as such, these ex-friends will probably not instantly be exposed for their part in the problematic streamer's crimes. But let me tell you this, here and now.
They knew.
They KNEW.
Just as kels and I know.
Now, I want to be clear. It took kels months before they realized the problematic streamer is problematic. It took me until this year to. In fact, I didn't think the problematic streamer was assuredly problematic until midway through the year. We had all the information back in 2023, but I wouldn't blame them for having not realized it.
kels didn't know what we were working on exposing. I didn't know. The ex-friends wouldn't have, either.
But they still knew what we were doing, and deliberately propagated the lie that has become widely believed by the masses. They deliberately furthered a lie they knew to be a lie, deliberately gaslit people, deliberately misled people. They chose the problematic streamer over my fiance. And they, by virtue of having remained close to the problematic streamer, have had one of the best positions to realize they backed the wrong horse.
They have had over a FULL YEAR to realize the problematic streamer is in fact problematic. They have had a full year to reexamine and reevaluate events. They have had a full year to question their actions and what they did. And in that time, they have only gotten closer to the problematic streamer, more trusted by the problematic streamer.
They knew what the problematic streamer did...and they chose the problematic streamer over exposing the problematic streamer's problematic nature and telling the truth.
So when the problematic streamer is exposed as problematic...these ex-friends will likely try to initially distance themselves, to protect themselves, to save face, to try and make themselves look innocent, or even look like victims.
They aren't victims.
They are accomplices.
They knowingly and deliberately aided and abated the problematic streamer and helped the problematic streamer get away with spreading a lie, with gaslighting, with abusing their authority. They helped gaslight and spread the lie. They helped him, every step of the way, choosing their friendship and closeness with him over doing the right thing.
I know that the individuals aren't scum of the earth. They're not completely horrible people. They're not wholly terrible people through and through. The problematic streamer has merits and isn't a complete and total monster through and through. The ex-friends are by all accounts good friends to those they choose to remain close to. They're not horrible altogether.
But they aren't good people either.
The problematic streamer is still problematic.
The ex-friends are willing knowing deliberate accomplices of the problematic streamer.
Mid-2023 both me and kels reacted badly and made mistakes. We're not blame-free. But we ended up gaslighting ourselves into thinking we were horrible. We thought ourselves monsters. We thought ourselves to be terrible. We thought ourselves to be absolute garbage who did horrible wrongs, didn't deserve to live, were monsters, villains. We talked ourselves into thinking we didn't deserve anything except scorn, and deserved to be banned.
A belief which lasted even when we began to romance each other.
And in 2024, we've begun to heal.
We've began to unpack the events which happened.
We've begun to see how we were always good people, wonderful people, who were trying to do the right thing.
And with reflection, we've managed to look at the actions of others and see..."hey...wait a minute..." regarding what they did, and realize we had been giving them benefit of the doubt where none should have been given. We thought them good, and time has shown how they very much aren't.
And we're healing. We're moving on. We're rebuilding our lives, together. I still maintain my belief. "Most humans are good, all humans are flawed". I just have shifted where I believe the problematic streamer lies on the spectrum, as well as the ex-friends.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter. I believe they will be exposed with time. Even if they aren't, even if they end up getting away with it...it doesn't matter to me. I'm going to succeed in spite of their efforts to sabotage our lives. The ex-friends orchestrated a campaign of misinformation which nearly drove me to kill myself, twice. Both in December of 2023 and this year. They didn't succeed, and I am resolved to make sure they never do.
That despite their efforts, I will build my happiness with my wife. We will live our lives together, happy, content. I'm going to focus on my novel and art, my content creation. I intend to have the stability and success that by 2028, I'll have gotten into a space where I can pursue picking Red Hood Rider back up, and continuing my work.
It's been a long, difficult, hard road, and our journey is nowhere near complete.
But I have full confidence in myself, my future, and my wife, that we will achieve the success and overcome all of the obstacles thrown our way.
We're not out of the woods.
But I truly believe the worst is behind us, that the times ahead will be better than the times behind, that our future is great and that we are going to have a wonderful life together.
I'm manifesting it.
So, thank you for reading this and for giving me this support. I hope I can give you something in return for it. <3
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