do you have more traits in common with eric or dylan? (idk if this has been asked before??)

It’s sort-of been asked before in a few different wordings, but that’s all right! I’ve always had a tendency to answer ‘both’, because I see myself in both of them for different reasons.

I think that Dylan is mostly my younger self. I was a gifted kid and battled depression throughout my teenage years, so I recognise a lot in the way Dylan felt and how he observed the world around him. I also think Dylan was just as detached from his body as I am – I live in my head a lot and it’s not always easy to translate all of that inner landscape into something tangible for the outside world.

I think Eric’s more like my hidden self, if that makes sense at all. I have my sense of humour in common with him and can sometimes make random funny comments the way he did as well. I also have some interests in common with him, mostly in pop culture and outer space and such. And I have a running pissed-at-the-world-misanthropist commentary in my head half the time, but the difference between Eric and me in this is that I tend to keep a leash on it and rarely give it a voice.

However, I think maybe my friends would be able to give you a more conclusive answer because I’m sure that there are things I’m forgetting here or not seeing right. =)

why eric, may i ask? i’m curious because dylan seems to be the one people sympathize more with

Of course you may ask!

Dylan always seems to be the one people gravitate to/relate more to/sympathise more with overall, which I understand because in the very early stages of my research I felt more of a kinship with Dylan as well. I think that I would have a pretty hard time dealing with Dylan’s tendency to put love on this high-up pedestal, to be honest with you. His kind of romantic idealism really makes me feel like I’m choking in a relationship, so I doubt that would go well.

That’s not to say that dating Eric would be problem-free (far from it), but overall I’m more drawn to his type and we’d likely get along like a house on fire on our good days. I have absolutely no doubt that I’d be yelling him down and having a ton of fights with him, as I’m a little bit too free-spirited to be claimed by anyone the way he loved to claim people, but his vibe just speaks more to me and I think I understand Eric pretty damn well at this point.

I also feel that, of the two, Eric was the easier to save.

If dating one of the boys would prevent all of it, which one would you choose?

Eric, hands-down, always.

✨ Anonymously ask me something you’ve always wanted to know ✨

Hey, good to have you back! I’m gonna put my shyness aside and make an offer/suggestion. You’ve translated the first part of “We are by we aren’t psycho” by Tim Krabbé, and his idea of how things went down that morning, although the real intriguing analysis he offers in the final chapter of his book you left out. As a Dutchie myself, I’d be willing to translate it, so it can be out on the blog here as well, since it will reach many more here than on my own sideblog.

Good to be here again, thank you! ^^

Ahhh man, you’re always welcome to shove that shyness to the side and talk to me! (Always a pleasure to meet a fellow Dutchie in this part of the woods. ^^) You could always post any translations of Krabbé’s book on your sideblog and @ my blog in it (or send me a link to it through IM) so I can reblog your work on it with your name attached! I’m quite confident that this approach will reach a lot of people while also remaining respectful of the work a translation takes – I would hate to take any kind of credit for it, as I know how much effort goes into making sure you get it all translated right.

I have translated the first chapter in its entirety, yeah, as it’s one of the most concise and least confusing timelines I’ve read when it comes to the exact narrative of what went down that day. I have also translated loose fragments of other chapters that struck me in some way while I was reading it. The final chapter is pretty interesting and I think I may have translated a few bits from that one already, though you’re always welcome to put the whole thing together if you want!
If I’m not mistaken, this post of mine showcases the eventual conclusion Krabbé arrived at. It’d be great if you could expand on that further, as my lazy ass just grabbed the most important bit and ran with it. 😉

All of the other excerpts I’ve translated so far can be found in my ‘vital posts’-list, if that helps you on your way any?

Hey! Glsd you’re back! You stated in one post, that you think bullying was a reason for columbine but not the main reason. But what do you think are another reasons and mor importantly what do you think was the main reason? 😊

Glad to be back, thanks!

I previously stated this stuff about bullying not being the main reason because some people love to claim that it was the only reason as to why this happened. I’ve seen it time and time again, here and elsewhere, that people will just go “Columbine? oh yeah those two kids were bullied real bad and decided to get revenge”. I think that’s an oversimplification that runs a real risk of not recognising the actual issues at hand and perhaps even runs a risk of sounding untruthful given how Eric and Dylan were also known to bully and be mean toward others.

I’m still of the opinion that there was not really a main reason, but rather a collection of reasons that all contributed to the massacre. I talked about some of the reasons in this post here, too, and mention how I believe that even Eric and Dylan themselves didn’t know why. They gave us a lot of reasons why, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they could see everything that was going on with them so clearly. I don’t think they understood the extent of their own mental/emotional problems, or grasped at the ramifications of toxic masculinity/hypermasculinity, or came to realise that a lot of their feelings at their core were about power and powerlessness.

I think we also need to recognise that the reasons why will vary between them, as they were very different people and had different families/life experiences/relationships/etc.
On Eric’s part, for example, you’ve got all those many moves that
uprooted him while Dylan stayed in the same place more or less
consistently since birth.

Eric felt troubled by always being the new kid in every town and having to leave his friends behind time and time again, while Dylan had been able to cultivate some friendships since kindergarten/early years of primary school. There’s a huge difference between how they approached relationships of any kind and a huge difference between their respective personalities in this respect.

We can’t discount their individual experiences as contributors to individual reasons why, and if you really dive into the case you’ll come to realise that they saw eye-to-eye on a number of reasons why but that their motivations and underlying thoughts/feelings about those reasons were different. For Dylan, for example, the notion of people being ‘zombies’ and him feeling utterly alienated from society were huge deals that influenced his reasons for the massacre. Eric shared this view to an extent, but his approach was more matter-of-fact ‘people are stupid and I am the desert prophet being ignored even though my vision is clearer than most’ rather than Dylan’s ‘I lack true human nature and they lack my overdeveloped mind’-viewpoint. Dylan is far more, uhm, metaphysical about stuff than Eric. I always say that Eric was very down-to-earth and human in his reasonings, while Dylan can sometimes start to get a bit float-y and seems to separate himself from humanity altogether.

If I were to define a main statement based off their entire collective of reasons, however, I still land at what I have stated in one of my previous posts:
“whoever did something this horrible must have felt very unhappy in their
own life, to the point where they felt that transferring their pain to
others was the only right course of action, and nobody in their life
really saw what was going on until it was too late”.

Someone once asked me on this blog why I thought Eric and Dylan did what they did. I answered “because they could” and I really recommend that you read the rest of that answer as well, as I think it is hands-down one of my best posts about Columbine. (Tooting my own horn here, lol, but sometimes I do say stuff on this blog that still makes sense to me a year or so later! ;))

Pardon me if this sounds selfish. Your blog is absolutely wonderful, amazing and fantastic, but a small part of me is, admittedly, quite envious as you’re so intelligent. I’d love to have such an extensive knowledge, but I can’t help but feel as though I’m nothing but dumb. I feel somewhat inferior. This is super irrelevant, and I apologise. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. ^_^

It doesn’t sound at all selfish to me to pay another person such a great compliment, though I rather wish you didn’t put yourself down at the same time! =) Thank you very much for saying such a sweet thing, and I do hope you’re having a wonderful day as well!

Please don’t feel inferior on my account, though. Or on anyone else’s, for that matter, because comparing yourself to others is a pretty dangerous practice sometimes. (I’m reminded here of the quote “the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel”, which seems strangely appropriate to put forth in this post right now.) I have absolutely no doubt that you are a great human being in your own right – your kind words alone show me that much! – and it’s time for you to celebrate your greatness rather than feel inferior or dumb in comparison to me or others.

Also, I always think.. intelligence is only as good as you make it? It is one of the things in life that I think you just have to feed and grow by putting in effort and working hard for it. Of course a fair bit of that hinges on what you’re born with intellect-wise and what kind of environment you grow up in as well, but I still think that intelligence is something that needs to be nourished if you truly want to use it for your own benefit and for the world around you. If you’re born with a substantial intellectual capacity but don’t do shit with it in life, chances are you won’t ever reach the full potential of that intellect and that would be a damn shame. I was lucky to be born into a family that nourished my intellectual capacity, lucky to have the means with which I could feed that intellect with more knowledge, lucky to be able to interact with so many people who’ve taught me so much.. and I feel luckiest when I realise that there is always going to be something I don’t know, that there is always going to be a chance to learn more, that there’s always more knowledge to be found.

I see absolutely no reason why you would not be able to expand your own knowledge, learn new things, and nourish the intelligence you were born with. If what you see in me in this respect is something you would love to have, then why not put the work in for yourself so you can start living to the full potential of your own being? Trust me, it’s the most worthwhile and loving thing you can give yourself in this life. This is such a lifelong journey and thankfully the only thing you can know for sure is that you’re never done learning more. Translate that envy into inspiration, tell that inner insecure voice that says you’re too dumb or inferior for this to take a seat in the back of your brain and shut the fuck up while it’s at it (repeat multiple times per day if necessary and trust me when I say it’s gonna take a while before you don’t hear from it at all anymore), figure out what it is you would like to do/change/learn in life, and go rock your socks off at doing it!

Welcome back, MamaDragon!! In the basement tapes, Eric poses shirtless even though he hated his appearance and was bullied because of his pectus excavatum. Was that a conscious way to take back the power in his appearance before his death?

Thank you very much, sweetie!

That is a really, really interesting question. You are absolutely right in saying that Eric hated his appearance and was subject to some bullying because of his pectus excavatum. In one of his rare ‘soft’ moments in his journal, he says “everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit”. It’s void of any of his usual bluster and shows Eric’s real thoughts and feelings far more than many of the other entries do. He also mentions his scars in the ‘25 things that make me different’-assignment he did, though he doesn’t expand on it any and it’s hard to know if he considered that a positive thing or not.

I think it was just one of many things that Eric did not like about himself, but the thing about the pectus excavatum was that he could not hide it behind his anger and his vitriol the way he hid all his other insecurities. This was on display for everyone the second he’d take his shirt off (and possibly even visible with his shirt on sometimes?), and I have no doubt that it ate away at him as being an illustration of him not being the perfect aggressor. A lot of Eric’s issues are influenced and impacted by hypermasculinity, which is very much about a specific kind of power at its core. (This also ties into his fascination with Nazism and the like, but that’s another subject for another time.)

Truth be told, I don’t think he actually outright posed for the camera or anything? I think he was so wrapped-up in NBK prep, so preoccupied with building his look for the grand day and making sure all his gear was in order, that I think he just forgot to give a shit about the fact that he was shirtless except for the webbing/harness-thing he wore. He was busy trying the webbing out in combination with his weaponry, which undoubtedly made him feel in control and powerful, so in my opinion that is the main reason why he went shirtless in the basement tapes. (There’s also that side-anecdote of him possibly having been wrapped mummy-style for a class project, which is lent some credibility by the person who said they witnessed it describing Eric’s sunken chest, but I can never tell what might have possessed him to do that – if he just ran out of fucks to give, if he felt that the wrapping would adequately cover him, if he just thought the project was too cool to pass up, whatever it is?)

One thing I think is vital to remember about Eric is that quite a bit of what he said and did was subconscious in origin. He prided himself on being self-aware and all that jazz, but he had several blind spots and hypocrisies in his thinking/feeling that prove there was a lot he didn’t know about himself yet. There’s such clear growth in him as you go through his writings, even though it’s growth into a destructive direction, but the only thing he exercised control over was the Reb-mask he’d fashioned for himself. Everything that was going on underneath his skin was spinning out of Eric’s control otherwise. I don’t think he consciously set out to reclaim the power in his appearance prior to his death the way that Dylan very much did. Eric was much quicker to discard his ‘look’ the day of the massacre, casting off his coat and every other thing that hampered the soldier-feel of the rest of his outfit fairly early on into it, while Dylan had built up this whole aesthetic look around NBK and fled into it for a long time before and during the massacre.

I think there was a quiet sort of confidence in Eric at first that got shakier and more messed-up as NBK drew closer, and his flight into the warrior-soldier look is very much a subconscious expression of Eric needing the safety of the familiar rather than a conscious attempt to reclaim his power. His conscious attempt to reclaim power lay with the guns, the bombs, and all the other weaponry – firepower and the ability to strike back/first equated personal power for Eric far more than aesthetic/a specific look ever could. Eric’s very much a “put your money where your mouth is”-person, so for him it would be more important to actually be visibly threatening with weaponry and noise and unpredictability and ruthlessness rather than with the specific look he cultivated for himself that day. His specific look was all about efficiency more than it was a flight of fancy, in my opinion, which is very different from how Dylan went about it.

you’re my favourite blog and i’m happy to see you on my dash again (but don’t feel pressured to come back if you don’t want to) <3

Thank you so much! To be called your favourite is an absolute honour. I’m happy to make my return at present and hope to be here more often again in future. One more informational blogger’s presence never hurts, right? 😉 ❤

racheljoyscotts:

The SWAT team carelessly dragging Rachel Scott’s body on live TV. (April 20th, 1999)

Hi! I’m confused about Eric’s hat that he was wearing (according to some) on the day of the massacre, did he took it off at some point? If this was asked before please let me know how to find it in your blog, thank you

Hi! That was not a hat but a balaclava, if memory serves me correctly, and Dylan was the one wearing his trusted cap throughout the massacre. (You can even see Dylan’s cap in the suicide photo, showing that he wore it right up to when he died.)

I have two posts in my archive that may be of interest to you here and here. Eric discarded his coat and other things fairly early on, while they were still outside, so if he had been wearing a hat/cap at all I have no doubt that this would’ve come off at that time too. He was going for maximum practicality rather than a specific look, and a lot of the conflicting witness statements come from the fact that Eric changed his appearance during the massacre!

I hope you can give some information: do you believe Dylan and Eric acted alone? I have read so much about other shooters, the government involved, etc. Specifically, was the US government involved. Thanks.

I believe that we can safely assume that all of the actions that took place inside the school that day were the work of Eric and Dylan. Many of the conflicting reports about there having been a third shooter come from witnesses located outside the school – there are quite a few of those statements that clearly identify someone other than Eric or Dylan, though no formal arrests were ever made in light of that and police narrative excludes such an option altogether.

I would personally find it very strange if a third shooter had been present on-scene outside the school only to just walk away at the time Eric and Dylan entered the school, as it is clear from the library witness statements that there were only two shooters in there with them and the cafeteria security camera did not pick up on an additional shooter’s presence either. Given the presence of security officer Neil Gardner and the arrival of a fair few other first responders on-scene not long after the shooting started, it seems highly unlikely to me that a third shooter would stay outside or be able to discard their weapons and blend back into the crowd at such short notice. Logic dictates to me that it is far more likely that Eric and Dylan acted alone, but it is still very interesting to review some of the witness statements that identify a third shooter and keep that option in the back of your head as unlikely but hard to rule out altogether.

As for the US government.. many of the Columbine conspiracies that are really outlandish mention that one as a possibility. I believe this is almost entirely due to Eric’s military background and the fact that his family lived and worked at Plattsburgh’s military base for a while, as that particular base is inundated with strange rumours and some seem to believe that Eric was subjected to a brainwashing program at a young age. If you really want to get into that, just type ‘MKULTRA Columbine’ into Google and be amazed at what you find. To me, these particular government-including conspiracies are on the same level of credibility as “Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK because he suffered from sugar intoxication, which is proven by the statement that Oswald drank Coca-Cola straight after the shooting” (and yes that is a legitimate theory put forth by an individual concerning the assassination of JFK – it’s the most ridiculous I’ve ever heard in my life).

Hi! I don’t know if you’re active or not atm but I’m still gonna ask this question (also sorry if this has been asked before, I don’t recall seeing it anywhere on this blog). Do you know if/think Eric and Dylan said anything to each other just before they shot themselves? -K

Hi! I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus of late, as I’m sure you’re aware of by now, but I appreciate the fact that you’ve sent me this question regardless!

I did mention this in some posts before, which you can find by searching my blog with the term ‘last words’ (or just by clicking this nifty link lol), but it’s always good to get a chance to revisit this.

The only two people who could have feasibly heard Eric and Dylan say their last words are Patrick Ireland and Lisa Kreutz, who’d both suffered very extensive injuries that prevented them from escaping the library between the shooting and the suicides. Both Patrick and Lisa passed in and out of consciousness and their own pain undoubtedly impacted anything they sensed. As such, the most we have from their statements are the coughing that Patrick heard (assumed to be Dylan’s last breaths) and the “are you still with me? we’re still gonna do this, right?”-statement that Lisa picked up on.

We do not know if Eric and Dylan said anything to each other before they shot themselves. Not factually, at least, because the only two witnesses to their suicides suffered severe trauma that impacted their recollections and observations of the goings-on in the library. Hypothetically speaking, though, we could say that it’s plausible they did – and just as plausible that they didn’t. I have always been fond of the theory that they walked toward the library in silence and that their last words to each other were of the mundane variety (like “you still good on ammo?” “yup”) rather than deeply meaningful. I think they were both very much on their own islands by the time they returned to the library, though they still worked together to engage the cops outside in a way that made the ‘rescue’ of Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo that much harder.

A lot of the focus for Dylan has always been on his suicidal ideation. People seek to understand Dylan through this, and have used his suicidal ideation as the main reason why he wished to participate in the massacre. It’s not a stretch to assume that Dylan was at once scared and hopeful when the time had finally come to follow through on his thoughts. He was elated about dying, but ritualised his death to the point where he was using all these little things as a way to stave off his nerves about dying. I can see him not speaking because it would take away from the moment he was having in which he finally came to terms with his own death.

With Eric, people’s focus has unfortunately always been mostly on his homicidal ideation. I have said for years that we need to take a really close look at Eric’s suicidal ideation, too, if we’re going to have any hope of understanding Eric at all, and we need to take into account what this signifies in terms of the massacre as well. Eric was very callous with himself and seems to have been painting a target of ‘come and get me I am right here’ onto his back throughout. I honestly will always believe that Eric had anticipated suicide by cop, or some other variation that did not lead to him actually having to pull the trigger on himself. For Eric, dying was an afterthought. I have written a lot on Eric’s suicide over the course of time, but my main takeaway from it has always been that Eric hated himself more than he ever hated anyone else. By the time he was prepared to kill himself, he was likely stuck in this vicious cycle of self-loathing and desperation/panic that would prevent him from speaking.

I think what I really want to say is.. they came to that school together after months of planning together, they killed other people together, they wreaked havoc together, they caused tragedy together, they died by each other’s side.. but in their minds, they died alone. The connection between them severed, their friendship no more than background noise, their own motivations and demons coming out for their final end. If that is bleak, I apologise – it’s my own observation of their deaths, though, and as such the most logical response to your question.

eating-children:

thedragonrampant:

Everybody’s always yakking on about how they “do not condone” and want to eradicate events like Columbine from existence, so listen up for a second and please try to comprehend the following.

If you genuinely believe that violence is not the answer to anyone’s problems, then you should enforce that belief in actions and in words. Violence is not just a punch to the face or a gun to your head. Violence is also in the words that tell people they’re not good enough, that speak of “you are different from me and I hate that you do not fold to my view of this world”, that become a call to arms for others to band together against someone who somehow found themselves on the outskirts of a group. Violence is not always in-your-face loud. Sometimes, it’s insidious. Sometimes, it’s poison rather than a gunshot.

If you genuinely have gotten it into your head that people are not allowed to make mistakes, that people are not allowed to learn and grow from their wrongdoings, that people are not able to move away from their past and better their futures.. then how do you think you would fare if you came face to face with Eric and Dylan? Would you judge them for their mistakes and tell them that they cannot atone for their crimes no matter what they do? Or would you, as I’ve heard so many of you claim, forgive them and love them regardless? Because if it’s the latter, then I see quite a few of you go down the road of the former toward other people who are still alive and able to change their future behaviour the way Eric and Dylan no longer can.

If you seriously think that bullying and meanness has a place in the future of mankind, then sit the fuck back down and think long and hard about that idea. And then contemplate something else in light of this: do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Be gentle, be kind, be peaceful – they’re not just hollow phrases, they are a choice. A choice we’ve all been given. A choice we make when we decide to close our eyes and count to ten. Or to twenty. Or to a hundred. A choice we make whenever we decide to engage or disengage in arguments and discussions. A choice that is harder than jumping down people’s throats, a choice that isn’t about winning or about being proven right, a choice that isn’t about gaining power or the upper hand.. A choice that isn’t about putting people down to the so-called betterment of yourself. You know what’s remarkable about that choice? That choice doesn’t leave you feeling hollowed out and terrible. That choice leaves you feeling full of something this world needs a hell of a lot more of: love.

Love isn’t weak. Kindness and forgiveness isn’t weak. Absence of violence isn’t weak. They’re strong. They’re sometimes even hard to live by. But they’re worth giving a shot. That’s what not condoning really means. That’s what “never again another Columbine” truly entails. They’re not empty phrases. They’re quite full of something.. more.

Honestly,  @thedragonrampant might just as well be my newest go-to for life inspiration. Thank you for existing! 

Thank you for the lovely, lovely comment @eating-children! I just so happened to catch your kind words when I checked in here just now – glad to have given you some inspiration!

Is this blog defunct now? :(

Not defunct, seeing as it’s not deleted and all information is still accessible. I’m simply on an extended hiatus at the moment, because I don’t feel I can do any posts/asks about Columbine justice right now. I’m still checking in here, though.