#soas personal posts

In July of 2019, I got a callout post over a lbgt zine of sonic characters. It was all SFW, all ages, and all ships. During the time, we got an ask about sontails, to which, I allowed because if we banned one ship, we'd have to ban more.

This did not go well and led to the zine disbandment, harassment non-stop to me, and left with 99.9% of my friends in the community dropping me entirely, ignoring me in favour of their popularity, "not wanting to be associated with a pedo", and more.

Trying to continue on, I tried ignoring the very obvious tenseness between me and the community, and tried carrying on. On Christmas of 2019, I posted a drawing, leading attention to me, and my curiouscat. I had received an ask doxxing me entirely with my address, phone number, and telling me to kill myself or stop being online entirely, or they'd post and leak my personal information everywhere for harassment.

This spiked my trauma beyond belief, and I complied. On Christmas day, I deleted my twitters and social medias, and shut myself away.

Since then, I stuck to irl friends and FB, and went to a lot of therapy.

I went to discuss if I really was any of the labels people called me online. I cried and agonized over being called a pedophile, or someone into incest, an abuser, a trauma abuser, etc. all to my therapist. I laid out everything to how I felt, if I was bad, and how to not "be like that". I had sessions in itself talking to my therapist about online culture and terms and how people got to the conclusions they did calling me those things over allowing sontails in our zine.

Where anybody stands on the fiction/reality debate, that's for them to decide, but after 3k of therapy, tests, and labs, I can tell you I don't condone things irl that are in fiction. That's what the fiction is for. If you disagree, that's fine too. I don't expect everybody to like me, nor side with me.

Any time within the past 5 years, any time I thought about posting online or speaking to anyone who had the same interests, it sent me into panic attacks and PTSD. It wasn't until just a few months ago, I even considered doing social media at all beyond FB with my IRL friends. Even now, the way I feel about posting this has me insanely nervous and sick to my stomach, and my trust in people is entirely shattered.

That being said, I wanted to talk about my experience with it here. I wanted to let people who knew me know what happened. And whether you agree with me or not, that's fine. This has weighed on my mind for YEARS, to explain myself, to heal enough to say it, and also, to be vulnerable enough to even show myself online after that. I know others have had worse times online compared to this, but this really was world shattering for me. To wake up and lose almost every friend you made over 10 years, as a human, is world changing to somebody. I think if it happened again, I can realize it's not a big deal and move on, but at the time, it really destroyed me.

I do not think I'm entirely pure in this situation, either. Regardless on the outlash and situation, I still hurt people and challenged their own safety and security and did not talk as politely to them as I should have.

If anybody who does dislike me from those exchanges happens to stumble across this, I do want to take the time to genuinely apologize I hurt you in that way. I don't think I should have lost my temper at some the way I did (even if it was understandable in terms of reactive emotions, not in how I treated others), and it's cool if we just look at each other and are like "I fucking hate that guy 🤙" and we both go on our way.

I tried too hard to make everybody like me at the expense of being kinda shitty as a person, and in turn, maybe this post is me making peace with the fact that the situation as a whole was kinda fucked up for both sides and I want to leave my feelings (mostly) here, and walk away from it as I go towards the future.

I struggle looking at any sonic content because fanart gives me panic attacks still, but I'm slowly getting better. I don't expect to be a part in fandom, or interact with others, to keep the peace, between myself and others, but if you're ever on other social media's (I have taken to bluesky, as of late, but different fandoms now) and you happen across me, feel free to block, or even say hello, if you want.

This feels like an overall like bitter post, but I avoided the solution my therapist told me for so long:

"If you want to get better, you're going to have to go into what scares you and socialize again."

Anyways. I'm sure there's always more to be said about this post, and maybe I addressed it kinda shitty, too. But I don't know how to word it any better. I just hope some clarity has been brought to anybody curious, and well. Shrugs. Thank you for reading if you made it this far to read my long ass cry type post of kinda self healing, kinda festering wound post. This is my bandaid and Neosporin to that cut. It's not pretty, but it does help.