PSA

Yeah, yeah, another one of these.. and hopefully the last one!

Here’s what’s been going on lately:

I closed my askbox for a while in order to figure out what to do with the 200+ messages lurking inside of it. That backlog consisted of messages sent to me over the past two years. Some would’ve taken a lot of research to reply to as thoroughly as I would want to, while others required a certain mindset in writing a reply that I couldn’t put myself to doing at that time. 

It was always fairly normal for me to have a backlog that would’ve taken me a week or two to clear out, so I wasn’t too fussed about that at first. I usually replied to messages in a pretty timely fashion. However, the backlog began to pile up when I took my long break from the community all throughout last year.
Between my regular job and the other things going on in my life,

I didn’t have the time or energy to keep up with the exponential growth my blog was going through as well.

So, I closed my inbox and took the time to weed out the questions that were redundant or simply not fact-based enough for my tastes. I answered a fair few that tickled my fancy and shot off regular posts in a queued fashion because of that. I naively thought that it would take me a couple of weeks to catch up and publish those asks that should be out there.

Here’s what’s going on now:

Like I said, I was being naive about that. *laughs sheepishly* It’s become clear to me that I have no hope of working through my inbox when I take one look at it and already want to run for the hills. Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with the quality of what’s being asked or with any message in particular! I have always loved, and will always love, feedback and questions and random thoughts popping up in my inbox. Your interactions with my blog are often golden, and I hope that won’t change with this post. I think I just got too stuck in this drive to clear the inbox that I forgot to have fun with it along the way. Too trapped in my own hamsterwheel here that guilt-trips me more often than not, too.

So, what’s next?

1. I have saved all your remaining questions up in two separate documents. I want to put questions about a specific topic/person together and see if there are connections between your messages that mean that they could get a combined answer. It is my goal to write posts for this blog that tackle these questions head-on and supply you with the evidence that directly pertains to your messages.
2. I have deleted the messages from my inbox, meaning that I’m starting it fresh with a clean slate tomorrow morning. The lone rule I have is that I’m generally not faster than Google, so please take 10 seconds of your time to search the internet for the information you’re after. If you find it and still have questions, shoot me that ask. If you find it and are happy with the answer, then we’re all good too.
3. I hope to alternate my future blogposts between answering any new questions that land in my inbox and writing up posts that answer the questions from the backlog. Any backlog-inspired posts will be tagged as #backlogbaby, so they’ll be easy to recognise.

In short (says the woman who just wrote a small novel, lol):

Your questions and messages are way too important to me to delete. I wanted to find a way to honour them while also taking the pressure off myself in the process. I hope to have found that method now, and very much hope to welcome y’all into my bright and empty askbox from tomorrow onward for the new phase of thedragonrampant.

Thank you.
❤

July 21, 2018

This is the day on which my inbox will be opened back up for your messages and questions! (It’s also not-so-coincidentally the start of my own summer vacation, haha.) Until that time, you will definitely still see more content appear on this blog – I have a fair few messages left to get to, and I hope to keep a queue going for the days on which I’m too busy to put out new content. Fingers crossed that I’ll cross that line on which I’ll be left with less than 100 messages eventually, haha!

Y’all are rockstars for sticking with me through this backlog, thank you. ❤

Friendly reminder!

You’ve got a few more hours to send in your asks and messages if you want to before my askbox closes again until July 21st. =) Thanks for your continued understanding about this!

For the weekend..

My inbox is temporarily back open! Please don’t show up in droves, haha, but the plan is to keep it that way until Sunday eve my time.. so if you’ve got anything to get off your chest, here’s your chance!

PSA

Asks on this blog have been temporarily disabled as I make my way through a huge backlog of questions and work on an original post. I hope you will all understand that I need some breathing space in which I can actually write some lengthier quality content and catch up on your messages without having more and more added to my to-do pile in the meantime. You’ll likely see some posts pop up as I go through my extensive pile of work, haha, so this blog will remain active and hopefully still provide you with the content I know you guys enjoy.

Your messages have always meant the world to me and that doesn’t change with this decision. The amount of love I’ve gotten on TDR over the past five years has been an amazing thing and I wish to carry that forward and repay that kindness in the best way possible by honouring your comments and questions with the time and effort they deserve. I hope you’ll take the time to comment on posts or shoot me a message in IM/Discord if you really need to get something off your chest in the meantime.

Much love! ♥

[small break]

Hi guys! Please don’t get too worried about this, but I find myself in need of a short break as I evaluate some things about my blog and prepare some writings for you all. My askbox remains open for the time being, should you want to let me know some thoughts or ask me something, but I need this upcoming week or two for myself so you won’t see me posting anything in that time.

You can reach me on Discord in the Columbiners chat, too, should you not want to be without me that long a time. 😉

Before You Ask..

Last year, I made a decision that I would no longer be answering everything that makes its way into my inbox. I have occasionally strayed from that by answering a few things here and there that I would otherwise have refused, but I really do wish to go back to a part of the original decision from here on out. This will allow me more time to put some things in order information-wise and hopefully also allow me to write the same quality content for this blog I hope I have given you so far.

I will no longer be answering anything pertaining to the following:

• Questions about how Eric and Dylan would be as boyfriends, what a
  relationship with them would be like, what type of girl they would like,
  and all variants thereof. My archive features plenty of
  posts that relate to this subject and should be comprehensive enough to
  form the answer you seek.
• Any and all sexual questions you can
  think of. The only sex-related things I will answer and address in my
  posts are the ones that directly relate back to their respective journal
  mentions of the subject.
• Questions regarding if they would like a certain
  book, movie, tv show, videogame, or music artist. Both of their likes
  and dislikes in terms of pop culture are very well-documented in the
  available evidence, which should be enough to help answer your questions in this regard.
• Questions that will literally take
  no more than half a minute on Google to find the answer to. You will get
  the answer a hell of a lot faster if you type it into that magical
  searchbox, because it often takes me a day or more to get back to my inbox and find the time to answer things in peace.

I encourage you to use the links I’ve gathered on my resources-page as well as the search function on my blog if you’re in need of information that falls under one of these categories. I realise that a lot of you ask me things because you’re genuinely curious as to what I have to say about it, and I do hope you’ll continue doing so in future, but I have to keep things workable and interesting for myself here as well and this decision is one that has worked well for me in the past. (Observant people will notice that it’s one bulletpoint shorter than the original PSA was, so consider that a little gift from me to you.. kudos if you figure out which subject I left off this time. ;))

Throughout today, I have been working on a revamp of my resources page. I chose to do not only a change in layout, but also to add some of the files I personally refer to a lot when I’m blogging about Columbine. I have linked to the full 11k, as well as reports and studies on the subject, on this new page. I have also taken the liberty of adding education and mental health resources to this page for your perusal.

Please take a look!!

(and maybe share what you think? ;))

PSA

If I follow/message you or comment on one of your posts, I will do so through crunchydragon! (That blog used to be my personal blog, but now it’s more like an archive and a means to keep this sideblog intact.)

Quick Note

Due to my general inactive spells from last year, I’m unfortunately a little behind on answering some of your questions. I’ve been cherrypicking whatever felt like the right thing to reply to for a while now, which has unfortunately left some older messages in my inbox that I have yet to get round to. I don’t know how noticeable my absence has been overall, but I do wish to apologise for the delay and for my lack of enthusiasm that I’m sure shone through some of my writing over the past year or so.

I’m currently getting around to answering a very big question that’s been staring me in the face for a few months now, but it’s likely to be an answer that spans several pages worth of information and that currently takes up a fair bit of my time research-wise. The good news is that I finally seem to be getting back into the swing of things – the bad is that maybe it’ll take me a little while to get everything back in order the way it used to be!

(This is me, asking you to please be patient as I scrape all of my Columbine research back off the floor and get to work again.. hang in there with me?)

May I please request of all of you once again to follow my requested guidelines before submitting a message to me? There are honestly not that many of them to contend with and it would alleviate a lot of my frustration to not wake up to the same old been-there-done-that type of stuff. Some messages I have received of late are very careful to either toe that line in an attempt to smudge across it or blatantly cross over it in some form or another. It’s possible that some of you may have missed that I’ve set some guidelines, so consider this post my reminder that I am no longer willing to entertain everything that passes through.

PSA: Asks

From today onward, I will no longer answer every question or message that lands in my inbox. Aside from hoping that I can get thedragonrampant to feature more than just Q&A, I am also still struggling to reconnect in full to the case and have found that some subjects make it a lot harder for me to do that. There are other fine blogs out here that have not yet made a distinction between what they will and will not answer and may be willing to reply to some of these questions for you, but I also hope that this will be an invitation to review and seek out the evidence in order to find your own answers in some cases.

I have blogged on thedragonrampant for years and the only other distinction I had really made to date was that I will only answer personal/spiritual questions on my other blogs. (This was done to streamline the flow of questions, which has proven quite successful to date.) Now, it’s become time for me to add the following to the list:

1. Questions about how Eric and Dylan would be as boyfriends, what a relationship with them would be like, what type of girl they would like, and all variants thereof. I have previously expressed that I find the idealisation of them in this respect troublesome, but I also find it uninteresting because they were both unsuccessful in this aspect while alive and are too dead to care nowadays. My archive features plenty of posts that relate to this subject and should be comprehensive enough to form the answer you seek.
2. Any and all sexual questions you can think of. The only sex-related things I will answer and address in my posts are the ones that directly relate back to their respective journal mentions of the subject. (This includes the inane “how big were their dicks?” and all variants thereof. All that does is make me cringe on their behalf.)
3. Questions regarding if they would like a certain book, movie, tv show, videogame, or music artist. Both of their likes and dislikes in terms of pop culture are very well-documented in the available evidence. I believe that these will help you determine the answer to your own question.
4. Questions that will literally take no more than half a minute on Google to find the answer to. You will get the answer a hell of a lot faster if you type it into that magical searchbox, because it often takes me a day or more to get back to my inbox and answer things. (In other words: everybody wins.)
5. Questions about their suicides. There are a fair few blog posts of mine out there on this particular subject that I still stand by today, so my hope is that those will be enough to answer any questions you may have. I have always found it an interesting aspect to the case, but need to take my distance from it personally because it affects me too much. I have had some harrowing experiences while writing about it in the past and no longer feel comfortable speaking about Eric’s in particular.

Thank you in advance for respecting my wishes.

Resources & A Question..

Aside from a new blog theme (hi, I guess this sorta counts as me being semi-back from hiatus), I’ve also taken the time to add more resources to the ever-growing resources page I compiled for you guys! It’s a work in progress that will likely grow exponentially in future. I hope you’ll enjoy the content and that it will be interesting and engaging to read. I’ve also taken the liberty to include body/mind-exercises and some personal favourites that help me out a lot when I’m feeling miserable. If anyone has an interesting link for me to add to this, please shoot me a personal message and I’ll check it out!

Also, I want to take the time to ask you the following question. Please think it through carefully and let me know if anything in particular comes to mind. I’m trying to come back from my big Columbine-break, but I may need some help to get going again..

What are some of the things you’d like to see on this blog? What would you like thedragonrampant to focus on? Do you want to see Q&A sessions, evidence posts, general information on mass shootings/true crime/psychology, observations of Eric & Dylan, other things..?

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!

From what I have seen on my dash, I’m not the only person who was contacted by a writer for VICE magazine concerning our interest in Columbine. I’ve had a brief conversation about the nature of my interest, the way I feel about Eric and Dylan, and some other things relating in to the case late last evening my time. It didn’t feel to me as a judgmental type of conversation at all. It is not the first time VICE has broached us and Columbine as a topic – you can read associated articles right here. The way I see it, it’s not a lot different from answering any type of ask about your interest in the case.. It’s just going to hit a broader audience than usual. 😉

Of course, if you feel uncomfortable with it in any way, you’re not obliged to participate or answer any type of question. But the fact that we are being asked at all leads me to think that we can exercise a modicum of control over how we’re being presented to the general audience through the way we choose to speak about something near and dear to all of us, which can be worth a lot in light of the negative rep this community sometimes gets. I did sidenote that if Eric and Dylan continue to be as misrepresented in the media as they are, our interest in them as human beings might seem quite strange. (Adding that, well, quite a few of us would have some choice words to say about that particular representation of the boys.. ;))

PSA

As you have all probably witnessed by now, my blog has recently seen a massive surge of questions and answers. I have gone from making incidental posts a month to shooting out multiple posts a day. It has been a balancing act for me to try and figure out how to handle it best, as not every question asked pertains to the material my blog is about. I have taken every bit of feedback into account on where to take this next. And, listen up, I have it figured out.. 😉

Let me say, first and foremost, that I truly appreciate anyone wanting to get in touch with me and asking me for my opinion on numerous and varied subjects. It has been a blessing to speak with you both on and off the pages of this blog. I sincerely hope you will continue to visit this blog and interact with me in the time to come.

However: starting over the course of this weekend, I will not be answering any more questions that do not pertain directly to Columbine, Eric & Dylan, and the way the case has been handled over the years.

Want to ask me personal/varied things? I have a blog for that.

Want to ask me spiritual things? I have a blog for that, too. 

I want thedragonrampant to be Columbine-centric only. This is the idea that I began blogging with and this is the idea that stays. I want to stay as true to its core as I possibly can. I want this blog to tell the stories of Eric, Dylan, and everyone involved in this particular case. I want it to talk about future prospects, about education reform, about issues within society that inform such massacres, about the true fallout from the massacre itself. I want its energy to remain focused instead of scattered.

Will you help me do this? =)

I would just like to take the time to update all of you for a second, as it’s been a while since this particular ‘project’ of mine has been mentioned and I don’t want any of you to think I’m not hard at work to make it happen. I realise through the asks and comments I have received over the course of time that quite a few of you have been looking forward to the Dylan-piece I spoke about writing after I had finally finished Building ‘Reb’ in April last year. Its tentative release date of September 2014 was pushed back indefinitely when I realised that I wasn’t getting any of that writing done between my then fulltime job and the relentless focus on Eric that arose from having dived so deep into his mind and writings.

Now, however, I have started work on Dreaming The Halcyon in earnest. I will push for a release within April this year (I’m not going to make y’all wait until Dylan’s birthday, are you kidding) and will hopefully have it live up to the expectations I know exist within some of you about it. In the meantime, I would like to ask you.. if there is anything you really want me to mention/talk about that you feel is important about Dylan’s writing, could you please send me a message/ask (through this blog or my regular one – whichever you prefer!) or reblog this post of mine with your comments? Thank you!

Tiny note

Just wanted to let you all know that I may sometimes take a little while to reply to you if you send me an ask or anything. =)

I am in a vastly different timezone unless you’re European, and I’ve noticed many of your questions hit my inbox during my night. Also, I have a fulltime job that basically means I will not be able to get back to you during my day – however much I’d want to! I would rather do my answers justice than give you two-word replies.

Thanks in advance for your understanding. :3

burnandraveatcloseofday:

The “Legacy of Columbine” video from ABC news, from October 5, 2014.  It seems that it’s always the male “Columbiners” trying to copy the attack, while the female ones…well, they do other things but don’t usually try to actually attack their schools!  And the fact that Columbine is so influential even 15 years later says a lot, I think, though I’m not quite sure what it says exactly!

Very nice report. Worth the 6-minute watch for sure. =) I’d advise everyone to take special note of Dillon Cossey’s words toward his younger self, as they mirror my sentiments toward my younger self perfectly. (From one ‘survivor’ of that lonely path of ‘Columbine’ to another, huh.. when we all say the same upon making it out of that darkness, there must be some hope and better places ahead for when you’re stuck in that zone right now.)

However hopeless you may feel, however much you may feel like there is nothing out there for you – going down the same road Eric and Dylan did is not the answer. Talk to people. Talk to me, even, when you feel nobody else is there for you. There are so many willing to help. There’s so much in store for you in your future. Please don’t waste it all away on that dark place in yourself that I, too, know so very well. =)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Sometimes, you’ve got to wonder what our occasional haters think they’ll achieve by ranting at us and sending us all these asks about how we’re all psycho/crazy/delusional/garbage/future killers. Interest in true crime is an essential part of life that requires a great deal of empathy and a willingness to understand the deepest and darkest places of the human psyche. It’s not for everyone, sure, but it’s an interest that’s not stranger than an interest in history or sociology. Why do you think so many of the people from this tag and other true crime tags aspire to become psychologists/psychiatrists, lawyers and other law enforcement people, even teachers and guidance counselors? We’ve seen the abyss that people must stare down or even descend into over the course of a lifetime, and where would you be without our understanding of that place?

Most of us aren’t advocates of what Eric and Dylan did. Hell, most of us don’t even have hybristophilia. Our ages range from very young to quite mature. Some of us grow out of it over time, taken up by other interests and pursuits in life. Others stay and become like little fossils with well-rounded and educated opinions aplenty to share. I’ve seen more wisdom and kindness in this tag than I’ve seen in a great many others. The community is here for you the minute something’s up in your life that you don’t know how to handle on your own, and it’s there for you too when you just want to relax and have a laugh with people who understand a part of you that very few people comprehend. We can be theatrical, hilarious, kind, angry, sad, happy, simply emotional, defensive, squabbling, any of those things – we are, quite simply put, human beings bonding over a common interest and forming new friendships and a chain of support along the way. None of these people I see here are insensitive little monsters whose biggest wish is to shoot up a school or partake in some other heinous crime. There is nothing but respect for the innocent victims in this case (if you take a little while longer, you’ll see that the only ones we ever crack jokes about are the boys themselves) and a great many of us have sat here in tears and anger while listening to the 911-tape, reading witness statements, or viewing other material about the case. It’s impossible to not be shaken by Columbine.

And it stays with you, throughout the years, even if you aren’t actively involved in the community, because Columbine’s not over. It’s not done. It’s an active case in quite a few respects, with the biggest of them all being that school shootings are forming an epidemic as we speak and none of the current system’s works are adequate enough to halt these. We can, and must, learn from Eric and Dylan and apply our knowledge to help children today and tomorrow before they go and idolise two boys whose surviving legacy is one of destruction, desperation, and despair.

You want to come in here and judge? You want to create some poorly-written article with quotes from us that aren’t even represented correctly? You want to spend all your time in hatred and sending messed-up messages to what are often young people trying to find their feet in life? Far be it from me to stop you, but you gotta admit that it’s pretty damn laughable that you actually think we give a hoot about misinformed and misconstrued opinions that have often been spoonfed by the media and a certain person called Dave Cullen who likes to refer to himself as an ‘author’. We’ve heard it all before. Every screaming piece of hate, we’ve seen it. Every itty bitty square fragment of “I hope you all die in a fire”, yup, we’ve been there. Guess what: we’re still here. We have a right to be, and we’re not going anywhere just because some random person flounces into the tag and denounces us collectively as “would-be mass murderers”. So, save your breath. Calm yourself down. Read along, grab a seat, have at it, surprise us even with a more constructive criticism than we’re used to! – but don’t think that just because you don’t like us we’re gonna magically explode into the atmosphere. Never gonna happen. At the end of the day, your opinion of us weighs less than sunlight in comparison to the bonds we’ve formed with the case and with each other.