PSA: Break Time

I can’t make this message any prettier than it is, so I’m not going to put tiny flowers around it and gift it with rainbow unicorns as an illustration. Some of you will know what this is about before you even read it, as I have not exactly been quiet about these feelings I have been struggling with.

I’ve not been feeling the Columbine blogging end of things for a while now. It’s become much harder for me to write posts or respond to questions with the same quality and thoughtfulness that you are accustomed to seeing from me. I have grown increasingly weary of being so deeply entrenched in the community, though many of you are absolute lovely treasures, and I feel like continuing to make this blogging experience happen at this point in time would only lead to a very permanent break in future. I mean to make this current break temporary. As of right now, I still hope to return to this blog at a later stage.

Until that time comes, I am always reachable on this blog through private non-anonymous messages and the general messaging system. If you can tolerate my many fandoms and oddities, you may like to check up on me and say “hi” on my main blog. Should you feel a true crime void from yours truly and not be opposed to reading about historical events, I also do my best to make an occasionally awesome home over here.

I wish all of you well.

♥

Don’t be a stranger!

nbkgodlike:

dialogickalmassacre:

Have no idea how reliable this is buuut… does anyone know if Wayne Harris has passed away????

do you guys know anything about this? @everlasting-contrast @thedragonrampant @mrs-ericharris

Wayne Harris was still alive as of 2015, as far as other online information about him with a much more reliable origin goes. Nothing from the claim above can be substantiated by other evidence. I’d also think that his obituary or other information about his death would have made it out into Colorado news sources at the very least.

r0ttencat:

I think it might be Dylan’s Dr.Pepper. However, it was found next to Daniel Mauser’s body, so I’m not sure.
Uh, this picture makes me so freaking sad…

Pretty sure this is Daniel Rohrbough’s can of Dr. Pepper, as he carried it with him outside for lunch that day and was seen with it in his hand shortly before he got shot. A sad sight that captures the futility of the shooting perfectly..

I know the character “frank castle” was created in 1974 but I can’t help but think that… he reminds me of eric SO MUCH I feel like I’m going to cry. I dunno, do you agree? at least a little bit?

*shifty eyes* Did you.. uhh.. see my activity.. on my other blog.. by any chance? *coughs* I solemnly swear I’m totally not tagging Frank’s latest incarnation in Daredevil with precious murder cupcake no sir I do not know how it feels to watch your resolve to hate him fly right out the fucking window the minute he turns an ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’. He got the jump on me in that respect and I am now at the stage of total trash fansqueeing about him losing all my dignity.

There are so many feelings I have about Frank right now. And, yes, sometimes when I’m watching him I get that sense that Eric shows some similarities to him and would.. understand the man to a degree. I think you see the connections that I see in there too if your response is anything to go by. Frank’s a one-man warzone of a vigilante with one hell of a temper, black and white terms in thinking and judging, and goal orientation like none other. His alliance with the Marine Corps and his unfailing politeness toward those he respects are also things that make me see smidges of Eric in him now and again. He is someone who could be a genuine hero and has many qualities that could make him so, but life threw him into a state of being where that’s no longer feasible in the way we think of genuine good guys.

But Frank.. at the same time.. as far as I currently understand him.. he would frown upon Eric, perhaps even treat him the same way he does all those other criminals he crosses paths with. His latest incarnation expressed such frustration with Daredevil’s non-murderous methods precisely because Frank believes that people who willfully hurt the innocent should be taken off the streets and out of life permanently. Imagine, if you will, Frank’s response to Eric shooting up his school and learning he’d planned to bomb it. That response ain’t pretty by a long shot. There’s such a moral ground within the character even in the light of his most morally reprehensible acts, which makes both his mindset and inner workings very different from Eric’s overall.

daffodylan-klebold:

I get that some of you guys have good intentions, but please leave the survivors alone and don’t try to contact them.

what is it about Dylan that makes him so, for lack of a better word, likable? Not just compared to Eric, but compared to any other mass shooters. They ALL leave some type of writing or manifesto behind, many of them speak of a lifetime of loneliness like Dyl does, but I just can’t figure out what it is that makes him seem so human and likable?

I think the answer to this boils down to primarily two things: personal preference and well-rounded narrative.

The personal preference part is, of course, something that’s entirely your own thing. It’s kind of like someone saying they have a certain type of person they always end up gravitating toward, or like someone recognising themselves in someone else. For whatever personal reason, you identify Dylan as having been very likeable – and identify him as being more likeable than the other shooters you have read about. It’s something that is true for you as something that expresses value from you about him, which really will end up saying more about yourself once you figure out why he is that way to you. I can’t answer why this stands out to you about him, as there are different things about him that stand out to me first before the thought of him having been likeable ever crosses my mind.

Well-rounded narrative is a partial reasoning as to why you may be more open to Dylan, though. Aside from his journal, we also have access to home videos and lots of photographs from his everyday life. Even the early days after the massacre showed people speaking well of Dylan, speaking about him with their friendship in mind, and had people expressing their surprise that he had “gotten involved in a thing like that”. He expressed a longing and a loneliness that many people find themselves identifying with. That kind of thing set the preliminary tone for the later narrative about Dylan that paints him in a far more sympathetic and warm light than you’d expect a mass shooter to get. Now that we also have his mother speaking about him extensively, there is an even broader opportunity of understanding and humanising him. The perspective on Dylan has therefore not been as narrow-minded as it has been about other mass shooters. These are all factors that contribute to people like yourself finding him so very likeable. You can’t discount the power of a narrative’s tone when it comes to why we form a specific opinion about someone.

Does Sue still live in Littleton in the same house or did she move?

I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, that I heard her say “my old house” during one of the interviews when the house was shown or when they were near the house. It may be possible that Tom still lives there now, though, as they are divorced. I don’t think she moved out of the area, however.. maybe she moved into a more central location in town?

what is the meaning of the heart with the bars in the middle? you know what i mean

I went into this a little bit over here, as he also uses the barred cross in other instances. However, the way the heart is drawn also reminds of the heart-symbol used by the Smashing Pumpkins (one of his favourite bands).

murder-facts:

source: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/columbine-effect-mass-shootings-copycat-data

In light of everything going on of late in this community once more, I’d like to make this post. It seems like I’m making one of these every so often as yet another drama hits. I guess that’s a testament to this place too.. in all the four years I’ve been here, there’s almost never been a dull moment.

Over the past two days, you’ve seen me post about my disbelief in a particular spiritual concept that quite a few people in this community do believe in. I initially thought that I would get a lot of shit for the way I expressed myself there, but the opposite has happened: I have received nothing but gracious messages about these two posts. I’m grateful for that, as there’s nothing quite so tiring as getting a lot of shit for voicing a personal opinion. Around May last year, I began getting a lot of spiritual questions that I answered as candidly as I do the factual questions. I hardly received shit from anyone for that back then, either, though I’m sure that it was an exhausting thing to wade through. It eventually led to me refusing to speak about it again or answer any questions on the matter on this blog, but that doesn’t mean that my spirituality doesn’t influence what I post here.

I am surprised and slightly dismayed that the gracious understanding and support that’s always been extended toward me cannot be extended to other people in this community. I understand perfectly well that there can be disagreement and annoyance about some posts, believe me. Anyone who’s heard me go “oh jeez not another one” in utter frustration over this twinflame-thing in private can attest that I’m not above headdesking about some things myself. Feel free to disagree – that’s what makes us individuals. But feeling free to disagree shouldn’t mean sending people hateful messages for posting about the things that they believe in. I am a firm believer in the unfollow-button in case anybody really gets on my last nerve, but more than that.. I’m a believer in making your own reality happen.

I have had a hard time posting of late, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed. There are days and weeks in which I’m totally silent on the subject, despite the fact that there are usually quite a few messages sitting in my inbox waiting to be answered. I struggle with the subject lately, to the point where even the release of Sue’s book didn’t get me excited. Writing about it doesn’t come as easily as it once did, nor does it make me feel right emotionally. Yet, I post the things I want to see in this community when I do decide to post. I love factual posts, discussions about the case, dissections of the psyches of these two boys, the occasional post about the victims.. That’s what I came here to talk about four years ago and that’s what I still like to talk about today. I’m not a flower crown person or someone who dresses like the boys did, so that’s not my content. I don’t like talking about spiritual experiences in public, either, so I’ve taken all conversation about it into private chats and dropped it from my blog almost entirely. I create my own blog to be what I like to see in this community – I walk my own talk, so to speak.

Do I get frustrated when it seems like almost nobody else wants to go as in-depth about it as I do? Of course I do. Does it occasionally get on my nerves to see the same reblogs of the same pictures over and over and over without anything interesting being added to it? I’m not gonna lie – it really does. Am I fond of all this rampant spiritual and psychic stuff that’s been making the rounds of late? It’s a subject close to my own interests, but it’s gotten tiring to see it soak up the majority of content at times. But I also ask myself “what are you gonna do about it?”.. and the answer is never “send all these people hateful shit and forbid all the flower crowns from happening”. That’s not gonna solve a damn thing. If anything, it’s just going to make people cling to what they believe in even more tightly.

Y’all know that saying of “be the change you want to see in the world”, right? If you don’t like what you see, put out there what you want to see instead. Post the things that interest you. Hell, start a discussion and tag a blogger like myself in it to join you. Dive into that 11k and pick out something that stands out to you at that point in time. Compare their journals to the real-life events that were taking place at that time – they dated these things, so tracing them back in the narrative can be fun! Watch a documentary and rip the expert opinions in it to shreds with your own evidence. Do a chapter-by-chapter read of a book on the matter the way I did with Cullen’s tripe and post it in all its hilarious glory. Answer questions about the case in more than a one-liner: challenge yourself to put together a narrative to rival the official narrative. You may find that you’ll get less concerned with what other people do on their blogs when you’re getting likes and reblogs and messages about your own things and getting discussions and compliments in your IM from people who’re just as into the research-thing as you are!

ella-g-elegy:

2009 ESPN article of the chilling first-person account of Patrick Ireland’s journey to the window, including descriptions of the dead bodies he passed to get to freedom. http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/news/story?id=4069745

rebsdomine:

If you think Dylan and Eric were the only victims of 4/20, seriously block me or unfollow me. 

GR review anon here. Thank you for replying. I had no idea where she pulled the antidepressants thing, but I thought that it got revealed in the book and I haven’t read that part yet. If you want to read the review, it’s a 2 star one by Erin. What’s hilarious is while she bashes Sue for writing the book and telling her story, she says that she wished that the Harrises did the same, cause they would be more honest. I know she would bash them even more had they wrote a book!

No problem. I just checked the review myself and even her description of Sue finding the homeopathic antidepressant is wrong. This is the fragment from the review:

If
she really had no idea her son was depressed, why was Dylan taking
prescription antidepressants? What doctor prescribed them and why? This
is never discussed, although she mentions that he took them and also
mentions finding the homeopathic remedy for them in his drawer.

The actual passage from Sue’s book in which she describes finding it reads as follows:

I was also saddened to find a nearly empty bottle of St. John’s-wort in Dylan’s medicine cabinet. I’d been in his bathroom lots of times in the previous months, to make sure he was keeping it clean, but I’d never looked inside the medicine cabinet. St. John’s-wort is a natural antidepressant found at health food stores and drugstores. Here was bald, incontrovertible evidence that Dylan had been depressed enough to try to alleviate those feelings through medication. The expiration date on the bottle indicated he’d had it a long time.

I have no idea why people insist on spreading misinformation when this kind of thing is very easily fact-checked. *shrugs* It’s almost like the reviewer thinks that the natural antidepressant was the prescription medication, while you can just pick it up at any store worth its salt in the natural remedy department. (Important note to anyone thinking about taking it: it can clash with some other medication you might be taking! St. John’s Wort is particularly known to affect hormonal contraceptives and reduce their effectiveness, so please make sure that you know the ins and outs of it before you decide to take it.)

I really, really doubt that the Harrises would be the more honest. *laughs* I have the opposite impression of them! If anyone would hide things and selectively speak of their son, it would be them..

Do you find it strange that we are here in this time period thinking about them, and they’re all the way back there, not knowing we exist?

On occasion, I do find it very odd! I think they would find that a little bit weird, too, though they’d probably be secretly pleased to learn that we still talk about them this much today and that people are taking the time and effort to understand them. It’s so easy to lose track of how weird that really is, you know? And then I’ll be sittin’ somewhere with a good book I know Eric would love, or hear a song on the radio that Dylan would probably tap his fingers along to, or see a movie they’d both be shouting in enthusiasm over, and it hits me that they’re not really around anymore to enjoy that and had no idea that the things I read and hear and see today would come into being. Very peculiar.

I’ve seen a particular cruel goodreads reviewer state that Susan is a liar, since she says she had no idea that Dylan was suffering from depression, and yet he was taking medication for it, so she had to know. Could you please say what you think about it? I was pissed of at the reviewer for thrashing Sue.

I haven’t seen that review, but I think that reviewer was very much mistaken! Dylan did not take any kind of regular medication (TCAs or SSRIs) for his depression. The most he seems to have taken is the natural remedy St John’s Wort, which can be helpful in combating mild to moderate cases of depression, which Sue does remark on in her book as something she had no idea he was taking at the time.

It was Eric who took SSRIs on the regular and had therapeutic levels of it in his system at his time of death. That reviewer obviously had no idea what they were talking about in this respect. Sue does mention other key hallmarks of depression that she may have missed in Dylan, but she is not a liar.

Hello :) Have you read Sue’s book? What do you think about the way she portrayed Eric? I just finished, and I literally don’t know. I don’t know how I think or what to think, anything at all. I’m curious of your opinion, thanks in advance!

Hi! I finished the book yesterday, so I have time to get back to you on this now. I have no doubt I’ll end up re-reading it at some point, because it’s a whole lot to take in and there are some things in the narrative that I’m still unsure of. I’m trying to wrap my head around the Eric-parts, too, and just like you I’m unsure of how/what to think about it all. So bear with me.. I’m going to just write down my impressions and we can hopefully take it from there.

I really liked getting some more information on Dylan’s relationship with Eric and Eric’s own behaviour, although a lot of it seems unfavourable and depicts Eric as a very concerning factor in Dylan’s life. I was pleasantly surprised at Kathy Harris fighting tooth and nail to keep Dylan’s friendship in her son’s life after the van break-in had happened and they’d been separate for a while. It shows that Eric’s mom was aware that Dylan was pretty much all Eric had in terms of a good friend and that maybe she even hoped that Dylan’s equilibrium could help her son find his own balance more. I was touched deeply by that move on her part, because it’s one of those situations where regular parents would have kneejerk-separated them and Kathy’s sensitivity to Eric’s needs essentially ensured that her son was able to keep the only friend he’d really made in Colorado. Whether it was the smart move in hindsight, well, it probably wasn’t.. but it’s such a mom-thing to do and I didn’t quite expect that.

I found Sue’s position concerning Eric very uncertain. She does state that a post-mortem diagnosis isn’t the way to go, but then goes on to say that Eric fits many markers of psychopathy. She absorbs Peter Langman’s opinion in the paragraphs before that, which is understandable but ultimately limiting in really understanding Eric. There is a slight minimalisation going on in terms of Dylan’s homicidal feelings and his behaviour during the massacre, too, which can give off the impression that Dylan only really acted up when Eric was around to witness it. Sue does state that she believes that Dylan was still accountable for the choices he made, “despite the hold Eric might have had over him”. It’s that last bit of it that I feel concerned and maybe even sad about. While I agree that Dylan and Eric had a toxic friendship, I believe that Eric’s hold over Dylan was never strong enough to make Dylan do anything Dylan didn’t want to do.

Sue’s resistance of the idea that Dylan was just a passive follower is a very good thing. Yet, the words she chooses to describe Eric with give Eric that same sway that he is known to have in every narrative that describes him as a narcissistic psychopath. She writes that Eric was single-mindedly focused on homicide, while Eric’s own parents as well as Eric himself noted suicidal ideation alongside his anger issues and other concerns. It is understandable for Sue to focus on Dylan’s suicidality, but she
does it in such a way that it almost negates his own homicidal
misanthropy entirely. It is also understandable for her to focus so much on her own son’s feelings that she did not give Eric that same space – her grief and the agony of the massacre are already so great, of course she’s not going to try and figure out Eric’s side entirely – but I did find myself wishing that she had stayed more level about Eric than she does. She says she does not blame Eric, but her choice of words do create a situation within the narrative in which Eric is made to shoulder far more responsibility for the eventual creation of the massacre than Dylan.

I have a hard time putting into words how it feels to me. I can’t really point at something particular in the narrative that is a clear example of what I mean, but it’s the overarching impression I got from the Eric-parts in the narrative. It’s a gut feeling that left me going “now what do I do with this”, knowing full well that many readers of the book will once again take away everything about Eric that I don’t want them to take away. It could have been vastly worse and I do think Sue remained respectful of Eric far more than some others would have, but something about the way she speaks of him does not sit well with me and I cannot for the life of me find the exact words that explain why.

What have been some of your parts,stories and/or chapters in Sue’s memoir?

I’ve just finished reading the book today, so I only now have the chance to respond to this in earnest. I came away from it liking it overall, though I did struggle a little in certain areas and shook my head at some minor tidbits. She cites a lot of good research in her book, but also chose to partially rely on some opinions that are not necessarily the most constructive out there.

Easily one of the best parts in the entire book for me – and you’re gonna laugh and go “what the fuck giiiirl” at me over it: any and all mentions of Byron. Byron Klebold is now officially an international treasure and should be cherished at all costs. I took to Sue’s descriptions of him in a way I never expected and every small mention of him was a tiny gift on the book’s pages. I empathised with him in an instant and loved his haywire way of making it out there on his own. I cannot quite express why I feel this way because it makes little sense, but I have come away from this book with a newfound affection for Dylan’s brother all the same. I mention it first because it’s literally the first thing to come to mind when someone asks “what did you like about Sue’s book?” – it’s just “Byron!” as an immediate answer and then it takes me a little while to come up with anything else at all!

I also treasure all the moments Sue described concerning her own grief and her own path in dealing with the aftermath. I loved watching her grow on her journey to become someone whose activism can change and affect so much in such a positive way. She has stood by her convictions regardless of how much it altered her deeply personal relationships with the people closest to her, which is commendable and something I greatly respect. The love she has for Dylan is tangible on the pages. Sometimes to her detriment, as I also feel that her focus on Dylan’s suicidality somewhat discounts his homicidal feelings and I have the impression that some aspects of the story as a whole have been ‘sanitised’ from their uglier streaks. But it is a mother’s love that poured out into that book, which is easily recognised and admired for the strength it must take to love her son no matter what.

The only moment that made me weep outright was the moment where she finds herself in the library. Not at the point where she sees the mark Dylan’s death has left on its floor, but the moment right before where she describes the atmosphere in it. It is so close and identical to the very strong personal impression I was given of the scene that it shattered me beyond belief to read the following words as confirmation. “I sensed only two things before I was overtaken by tears. I felt the presence of children, and I felt peace.” I had to put the book down and sob for a while after that sentence – it brought my own impression crashing down on me once again and it was hard to continue reading afterward.

Honorary mentions of the parts I loved go out to the new stories about Dylan, particularly those of his childhood, to the sense she had after his birth that he would one day bring her great sorrow, to the new insight into his friendship/bond with Eric (though I will forever disagree with how much blame Eric is intended to shoulder), and to the definite confirmation that Dylan was indeed a gifted child. For me, that latter confirmation solidifies my own take on him greatly.

When Sue said Dylan told her, “stop pushing me, I don’t think I’m going to be able to control my anger” <<something along those lines, do you think he said that because she was a woman? Do you think he would have said that if it was his dad or brother?

The thing that really surprised me about that response is that it’s the number one response they teach you in therapy when you feel like someone’s pushing is going to make you do or say something you’ll regret. Dylan kept it very personal with his admission, but got the message across concerning how he felt and was clear enough with it to actually make his mom back off. It’s a very mature response to an argument and one that actually speaks volumes about the way the Klebolds raised him. I think you could only really access and counter an argument with them if you stayed rational and calm throughout, so it makes sense that Dylan responded this way.

We respond differently to different people, though. Not because they’re a specific gender (at least, I’d hope not!) but rather because different people have different personalities that respond to things differently. My arguments with my mom are very, very different from my arguments with my dad in both tone and longevity. What works as a response to my dad doesn’t work as a response to my mom. I can imagine that Dylan would tailor his language to different people the same way I do in arguments while still managing to get his own message across. He might not have worded things toward his dad the way he did to his mom, exactly, and I think that his dad may have responded differently from his mom too.

With Byron, I think that there would have been a far more equal approach to an argument.. I doubt that Dylan would tell him to back off and they’d sooner come to blows because of it. Sue’s been very level about their relationship and doesn’t seem to recognise any kind of upset between the brothers, but I have the strong impression that there was resentment on both sides and that an eventual argument between them would never have consisted of “please back off”.

Do you have any favorite moments in the Eric Inside Columbine video?

That entire video is a little treasure, but some parts of it stand out more to me than others. I particularly liked seeing Eric’s body language when they walked through that group of jocks (it’s very outwardly submissive and protective in regards to himself), those moments at the table where Eric’s not really participating in conversation all that much and seems to be off in his own little universe, and that final “bye”-wave he gives Brandi when it becomes clear she’s ignoring the hell out of him.

That video’s been so helpful in showing us another side of Eric. It’s not what he says in it that really matters (though the “oh nevermind” cracks me up every time) but rather the body language and facial expressions that speak volumes there. I find it the most telling of all the videos we have of him, really, because he’s not acting any kind of part and it’s just another day in Columbine..