20 Years

1999 – 2019.

I have often talked about the world being divided up into pre-Columbine and post-Columbine. There is a before and an after to this event that speaks of the impact it has had on our culture, our media, and our society as a whole. It is hard to separate its effects from the goings-on today and even more difficult to ignore the fact that Columbine has formed a blueprint for other mass shootings. Columbine has become entangled with the narrative that surrounds these shootings to the point where we can possibly no longer imagine what our society would look like if this one event had never come to pass.

It is fair to say that, twenty years ago today, our world changed. It took less than an hour for everything to tilt and shift and descend into chaos. It took less than a day to confirm that fifteen people lost their lives and countless others were left forever changed, newly traumatised, by this event.

It has taken us twenty years of discussions, debates, protests, laws, books, news articles, and countless other things to try and understand why — and attempt to change the future with this understanding. We’re not out of the woods yet. There is still so much work left to do.

Today is not the time to talk about what needs to be done. It is not the time to talk about details of what happened when and why, of motives and ideologies, of changes and traditions. We have had twenty years for that. We will have many more years just like this.

Today, it is simply time to remember. We need to remember that fifteen people have not known these last twenty years. We need to remember that fifteen people will never see our tomorrows.

Remember Columbine.

Embrace the hopes and dreams of Rachel, Daniel R, Kyle, Cassie, Daniel M, Corey, Dave, John, Kelly, Lauren, Isaiah, Steven, and Matt. Let their presence be the guiding hands within our future, so that we may keep their spirits alive inside all of us for the betterment of our world.

Listen and open our hearts to Eric and Dylan. Let their presence be something that inspires us to reach out to those who find themselves locked in pain and whose hurt urges them to lash out at the world around them. May we be capable of being the light that reaches even the darkest of places, so that we may give hope and strength to those who have none.

We will not forget.

We will remember.

an update, of sorts

So, huh, it’s really been forever since I was last active here. I hope that some of you are still reading along with me at this point. (I have altered the comment section a little in a way that should hopefully be easier if you want to talk to me in future, anyway..)

When thedragonrampant was deleted, I initially thought I’d be able to just smoothly transition over to this new space and maybe get away with another account (columbinerd) on Tumblr at the same time. I wound up losing the second account the same way as before, so I know better than to keep on trying that avenue from here on out. The smooth transition to WordPress, too, did not happen. I felt homeless, like I’d just lost control of any kind of steering wheel I thought I had, like I would need to reinvent myself entirely in a bid to keep going. I felt like this platform is so vastly different from what I had previously worked with that I would lose some of the pizzazz that used to be so integral to my blog and my writing.

To say that I took a break from the case altogether would be somewhat faulty, although it’s true that I haven’t been writing about it as regularly as I used to. Losing my blog did a number on me in ways I didn’t anticipate and I have spent the better part of this past half year trying to find my feet again. However, I’m still active on Reddit (hi, please drop by our sub!) and on Discord in discussions about the case. I can’t shake Columbine no matter how hard I may try, so it seems only natural to come back to this blog right now and attempt to make the most of it. I hope to be able to fill it with the same quality content as before!

If you are still reading this, thank you for sticking with me. It means the world to me.

a new leaf

I don’t know how often I’ll use this blog in future, but thedragonrampant was just terminated on tumblr and so this is a logical step to take.. I’ll be here for the foreseeable future.

This might actually get me to work on my book.

How did you learn about columbine? And when?

I first learned about it when I saw it on the news while the shooting was either still in progress or had just ended. I was ten years old, so the details elude me a bit – I mostly remember fragments from it, though I do know it was the first line of news due to the misinformation/uncertainty that was still present in the reporting at the time. Preliminary reports about it had a much higher death toll and such, which I definitely remember hearing live as well.

@anon People aren’t born evil. People with mental illness’ aren’t bad or evil either. Understanding that people who murder, are/were still people before and after they killed. Humans are capable of both bad and good, and understanding that about humans is vital to broadening our perspectives of the good and bad we experience ourselves. Makes us recognize the bad before the worst can happen and helping or stopping disasters. That’s something I was taught in basic forensic and psychology classes

I hope Anon is still reading along after this last post of mine on the subject, because your reply is a gemstone and I just want to acknowledge it as being vital to the reasons why I blog about this case and about the shooters in particular. =)

reb-exe:

reblog this if you are over 18 y/o and are a part of the true crime community. trying to prove a point to my friend.

Hi Mama Dragon, love your blog! I wanna ask you your opinion on why Eric didn’t ask Susan to the prom? I mean he’s known her for a while, she was a student there; and he ended up spending the night with her anyways so why wasn’t she a choice do you think? I’ve always wondered this.

Hi! Thanks. =)

I think that Eric and prom just weren’t jiving too well with each other by the time he asked Susan out. He had attempted to score a date with several girls, who all rejected him, and even help from friends like Chris Morris wasn’t enough to convince a girl to go to prom with him. I think of him asking Susan on a regular date as him trying not to jinx it for himself all over again, as though he might’ve been worried that she would say “no” too if he asked her to prom.

Susan and Eric had known each other since January and she knew he was interested in her. Their date was rather a spur of the moment thing, though, because Eric literally just called her that same evening to see if she wanted to come over and watch a movie with him. He knew she probably didn’t have any plans due to them talking on the phone the day before, but he didn’t really ask her out then either. Leaving asking her out until the very last second meant that prom wasn’t an option for sure.
I think he was really scared of rejection by the time

he finally dared ask her, and that it was a last-ditch ‘nothing to lose’ effort from him because of that fear..

reberic1999:

“Columbine is a very cliquey school, if you weren’t accepted in jock group or the prep group…you were outcast.” – Tiffany Typher

Get to know me

All right, so, I was tagged a little while ago by @halcies and @reberic1999, thank you both! It’s been a while since I did a personal post like this one so indulge me for a minute, haha. (And, yes, I know the rules state you have to tag an x amount of people but that’s not gonna happen.. ;))

Nickname: Mama Dragon
Gender: female
Star sign: Aquarius
Height: 174cm, so that makes me 5′8 or something? (American measurements will continue to kick my ass forever ugh)
Favorite animals: raccoons!! and foxes, and llamas/alpacas, and giraffes, and meerkats, and cockatoos, and so on and so forth..
Average amount of sleep: 5-ish hours during weeknights, 7/8 on weekends (I basically function on 4 hours or more, so I tend to forego sleep in favour of other pursuits)
Dogs or cats: both? both is good. I grew up with a dog, so that’s what I’m used to, but neighbour kitties tend to flock to me a lot of the time
#of blankets: one under my pillow, lol, and in winter I tend to pile them on so then it’s easily three or four in addition to my comforter (I get COLD yo)
Dream trip: USA roadtrip for sure!
Dream job: book author
Favorite song of the week: Toothgrinder’s Let It Ride
Comforting things: curling up with a good book, applying lipstick, dancing, listening to music with headphones on, movie theatres, music festivals, libraries and bookstores, feet in the sand on the beach, watching animals just putter around in their everyday lives without any care for human presence, coming home after a long day and kicking my shoes off, hot showers, handwriting letters and such, painting with my fingers instead of with a brush, mucking around in Photoshop, the knowledge that the sun will rise and set no matter what unearthly shit is going on in my life, THIS, and the list goes on..

Tagging.. @scarletestrella, @melanch0licpumpkin, @dropthedoublebass, @columind, @vampiregirl99, @goddamndylan, @incelphobiia, @calsgabriels, @thedogdaysuniverse, @bitchyturtleface, and YOU if you are reading this and want to do it!

do you know who the girl is that is in the rampart range video?

Here you go.

Hi! Long time follower of your blog. I just wanted to get your thoughts, if any, on Nikolas Cruz? I’ve been reading up on his life and it’s a rather sad one…Thanks :)

Hi! Always nice to hear that people have been following me for a long time, that’s good stuff. ^^

I don’t have that many thoughts on Nikolas Cruz, to be honest? I haven’t really followed his case beyond the activism that his actions sparked, but did read some things that made me think that he exhibited plenty of warning signs prior to the shooting that somehow weren’t adequately handled. It’s always horrid when a kid slips through the cracks of the system like that and doesn’t really get the help they need. That said, I don’t understand Tumblr’s obsession with him any more than I understood the Dylann Roof circus..

You can’t humanize people who aren’t even human to begin with. Bad people are sometimes just born bad, of course a rough childhood, upbringing can be contributing factors but some cannot be cured with psychiatry. Most psychologists and experts agree that Eric was born a psychopath and beyond help. He was clearly violent and equated power with violence and simply wanted to cause hurt and pain to people. There’s not much to understand about his motives. He made them perfectly clear.

Do you even hear yourself right now?

I understand that it might be difficult for someone like you to comprehend that this, too, is a part of humanity. I’m certain that you would rather think of these acts of violence as unbecoming of the human race, that you would see this hatred as somehow being separate from everything that makes us human, that you would want this desire to hurt others to be something that is not a part of who we are as human beings. Truth is, though, that these people are just as human as the rest of us. They were born human, in human bodies, with human minds and human feelings, and they represent a part of humanity no matter how much you wish they didn’t.

Eric was not born a psychopath. He was never beyond our help. Those experts you mention didn’t know Eric when he was alive and certainly didn’t make an effort to know him when he was dead. They worked off biased parts of the evidence that were created by Eric for the audience he knew he was going to have. I don’t know about you, but I would not want to take the word of a self-confessed liar and hypocrite at face value the way that these so-called experts did. There is a whole lot about Eric’s motives and ideas that only becomes clear when you make the effort to understand him beyond the psychopath-label he was wrongfully given. I’m sure that you think that he makes sense to you right now in this lovely little bubble of “he was a psychopathic monster and beyond anyone’s help”, but I can assure you that there’s a whole lot more to Eric than what meets the eye.

I realise that it is a very scary thing to step out of your comfort zone. I know that it’s a quietening experience to realise that all this pain, all this hate, all this rage, is rooted in who we are as human beings and fortified by the society that we have created. I know that it’s a terrifying notion to look at a mass shooter like Eric and say “he was not beyond our help and understanding”, because that means that we are acknowledging our own responsibility toward young people who relate to him today and still need our help and empathy. I know that it’s not easy to see Eric as the human being he was when the violent act he committed was so terrible and devastating.

Well, guess what? It’s about damn time for you to get out of that comfort zone of yours and see the world and humanity for what it really is. In fact, I’d say it’s long overdue. We’re not perfect good creatures. We’re fallible, dangerous, loving, generous, violent – a kaleidoscope of opposites and hypocrisies and vibrant aliveness that can never be called monstrous but can always be called human. Eric was the best and worst of us, just as I am the best and worst of us, just like we all are the best and worst of humanity. It’s a balancing act for us all. Eric tipped the scales one way, in his end. I hope to tip the scales another way, in my end. He is not less human than I am. I am not more human than he is. There is something very humbling about that realisation. Something beautiful, even, in the face of so much chaos.

I urge you to open your heart. That’s all I can do, in the hope that one day you will come to understand that Eric and you are not that different after all. I never wish bad things on people, but I do wish them experiences that will make them change and learn and grow. I wish them things that will make them realise what it means to be human. Today, I wish that for you. Whatever will happen in your life, I hope that it will show you that we are all good and evil and something wonderfully inbetween. We were not born monsters. None of us were. We all have a spark of life, a flare of humanity, an abyss of dark within us. To understand this is to know we are human, and to be able to see the human in others.

I’m not using the names of the perpetrators here because to do so would to give them what they wanted: attention. They wanted to leave their mark on world history. They were not bullied they were not outcasts, they do not deserve sympathy or understanding. It’s the victims we should be remembering not their killers. I highly recommend you read Dave Cullen’s Columbine. It breaks down the mythology surrounding Columbine. To try and create sympathy and humanization is disrespectful to the victims.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa😂😂😂😂😂😂

I highly recommend you read the actual evidence instead of a book that is known for its inaccuracies and is heavily criticized by researchers and survivors alike. Tell you what, why don’t you start with this and discover the many instances of Eric and Dylan being harassed for yourself?

If you want a real breakdown of the mythology that surrounds Columbine, read GQ’s Columbine Never Sleeps. Read my writings on Eric and Dylan while you’re at it, too, and maybe read my chapter-to-chapter dissections of Dave Cullen’s book as well. (Yes, I’ve actually read it already. I wish I could say the experience was enjoyable, but all it gave me was high blood pressure.) Forget all the things you’ve read so far, because it sounds like they have only succeeded in feeding you a false image of what Columbine was and what these boys were about. Forget what you think you know. Don’t trust Dave Cullen. Do the research. Think for yourself. Open your mind enough to realise that there is nothing more damaging than looking at these young and vulnerable men and saying that we do not need to remember them.

If you want to have any hope of these mass shootings being stopped, if you want our kids to stop getting gunned down in classrooms, then you need to understand why this happened and why it keeps on happening. You can’t understand something you make a monster out of. You can’t stop something from happening when you make no effort to understand what moves these perpetrators to commit their atrocious crimes. If you truly want to respect the victims of Columbine, then why not work to ensure that other people won’t become victims of the same thing? Why not extend our empathy and our understanding toward Eric and Dylan and others like them, in a bid to help and heal and learn, so that we may come to recognise warning signs and will be better equipped to handle potential mass shooters in future? 

Say their names. Say their names and the names of their victims every day. Offer them in prayer to whichever god you pray to, and offer them to the sky and earth in recognition that we are all connected to one another and that what happens to one of us happens to us all. Say their names until nobody else dies in their wake.

Currently in the discord and the topic of favorite Eric quotes came up. What are your personal favorites?

Well, if you were in the Discord you already saw some of my faves.. I’m called Wonderfuk over there and I’m pretty certain I chimed in on that subject. 😉 For me, it’s hard to pick faves because there are so many that either make me laugh or make me nod in agreement. A select few, then..

This quote from the Rebel Missions:

Fully equipped with 3 eggs, 2 rolls of toilet paper, the cheap brand, no pretty flowers (we were disappointed too), superglue, and the proper tools to make his phone box a busy box (for those of you that are stupid, a busy box is where you set their box so that when they try to make a call, they get a busy signal and when someone else calls, they get a busy signal too).

These from the journal:

just because your mommy and daddy told you blood and violence is bad, you think it’s a fucking law of nature?

give the Earth back to the animals, they deserve it infinitely more than we do. 

wooh, different pen. HA! alright you pathetic fools listen up; I have figured it out.

And from Radioactive Clothing:

We got this new guy on our team now, name’s uh… what the fuck was your name?

Columbine, 20 Years Later and Beyond: Lessons from Tragedy

In their newest collaboration, Jaclyn Schildkraut and co-author
Glenn W. Muschert will provide a critical retrospective of the 1999
Columbine High School shootings as the 20th anniversary approaches.
Columbine was a watershed event that changed the way America views mass
shootings, both in and out of schools. In this book, the authors will
consider Columbine’s impact on public opinion about mass shootings,
school security, law enforcement practices, threat assessment,
legislation, and more. In addition to considering the changes made in
the past 20 years since the shooting, the authors also offer
consideration of how the nation continues to move forward as we surpass
this milestone anniversary.

All royalties from this project will be donated to the Columbine Memorial Foundation. Visit their website at http://www.columbinememorial.org/ to learn more about this organization or to contribute to maintaining this memorial site.

Keep an eye out for this new book hitting the shelves early next year, folks! BookDepository mentions that the foreword is by former Columbine principal Frank D’Angelis and it looks to be an interesting examination of Columbine’s impact for the 20th anniversary..

Columbine, 20 Years Later and Beyond: Lessons from Tragedy

truecrime-af:

joining the TCC like

What are your uncensored feelings of both Wayne and Kathy?

“My parents might have made some mistakes that they weren’t really aware of,” said Eric with a shrug. [Source: basement tapes transcripts.]

I think that his own words here come closest to what I feel about Wayne and Kathy, too. To me, his family relationships have always felt more like conditional love. I primarily say that because Wayne’s notebook gives off the impression that they wanted Eric to behave a certain way and that they wanted Eric’s bad behaviour to get back under control any which way possible. Eric, too, alluded to having to fall in line with family expectations and not really being able to march to the beat of his own drum. There are breadcrumbs and certain patterns within those breadcrumbs regarding his family life that always make me re-frame his behaviour within that particular context of him trying and failing to be ‘the good son’. I can’t really explain what it is that I see, but I have certain baselines and touchstones when I write about Eric that I always come back to and his family life and family expectations are very much a part of those. I do think/hope that his parents cared about him and loved him in their own way, though, and I feel like the heartbreak they went through after the massacre is something very real.

I think Wayne wears the pants in that household and that Kathy is mostly content to follow his lead. I think of Kathy as the more sensitive, but of Wayne as the more decisive. I think they have a pretty old-fashioned role pattern going for them in general, which seems to be what they’re comfortable with. Eric’s sensitivity and his struggles with moving around so much may have flown under the radar here because of the communication style/atmosphere in the household, though, and it’s pretty clear that he opened up to Kathy more than to Wayne. What I found interesting is that Eric classified the gun show as having been a potentially good bonding opportunity for him and his dad, which shows to me that Wayne and Eric may have connected over doing things together (like, say, baseball or soccer) more than they would’ve had a heart-to-heart by sitting down and talking.

Eric always tried his hardest to exonerate his parents and to exempt them from any blame for his terrible actions. The closest he ever came to admitting that maybe they made mistakes is in the quote I mentioned – and even here, he weakens the statement by saying “they weren’t really aware of [making them]”. I’ve talked about this at length in this post. But the thing is, Eric’s kinder about his parents than many of us are. There is something really gut-wrenching about his family life somehow, but I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. I do feel like they give off the impression that they’ve pulled their hands off their youngest son and like they don’t care how awful the media portrayals of him have been, and then I feel awful for even thinking that about people I have never met in my life..

I always say that I hope they loved him. I hope they still love him. Anything else is too heartbreaking for me to think about.

I honestly do not think the boys were racists, bigots, or misogynistic etc. I think they were looking for the worst possible thing they could attach themselves to in order to be “bad”. (For a lack of a better term anyways) Spouting off racist comments is a very quick way to seem bad with out a lot of effort. Yes? Especially with a lot of curses.

I think what you’re saying is true to an extent. I do think that they used these comments as a way of alienating people and making themselves sound badder than they were. The more appropriate term for them overall would be misanthropic, as they targeted the entire human race with their actions and did not specifically set out to target a minority group or women. Like Eric said, “I hate the fucking world, too many goddamn fuckers in it”. That, to me, is the core of the motive much more than any of his bigoted comments were.

However, as I have said on this blog before.. they didn’t exactly have a problem with adopting bigoted talk as a means of expression. To me, it’s really fairly simple: if you talk like a racist misogynist bigoted piece of crap, then – congratulations – you are a racist misogynist bigoted piece of crap. What the true intent behind those words might be and why they may have adopted those terms of speech doesn’t matter. What matters is that they said it and were okay with saying it. They were perfectly fine calling Isaiah Shoels a nigger right before they killed him, they were perfectly fine talking about women always being subjugated to men on their basement tapes, they were perfectly fine compiling lists of slurs against minority groups (but also against white people – here’s where the misanthropy does kick in), they were perfectly fine designating snow as ‘gay’ and calling people ‘faggots’.

So, yeah, we can argue that their reasons for saying that stuff were founded in shock value and in the need to look bad. I think it’s a valid way of looking at this that is probably the truth, especially given comments like the one Eric made about hating racists. But it doesn’t change the fact that they were okay saying this stuff. It doesn’t change the fact that they used this terminology often and willingly. It doesn’t change the fact that they were mostly not called out by anyone on their use of the terms, either, which should tell you that it was probably less of a shock value factor to the whitebread suburbia that’s Littleton than we now assume it was. While they may not have been racist, misogynist bigots deep down inside of themselves.. they were racist, misogynist bigots in their speech and made no effort to curb that. I think we need to acknowledge it like that, to be honest.