A Momento

I think I need to start off with saying, I don't hate everyone in the fangame community. There are genuinely good people within the community, who I believe honestly wish to share and talk about fangames and achievements like a real community. That being said, I've decided that I've had my final straw. Pretty much anything fangame related that I've played (My Youtube content and GameMaker projects will remain unaffected, but don't expect anything from me for the foreseeable future) is gone. I simply cannot stand to play fangames anymore, based on social obligations, prejudice of skill, a bad history of verbal and psychological abuse from other people in the community, and the total loss of interest in them after years of dealing with the same old elitist, degenerate, or otherwise lunatic bullshit at every step of the way. When I first joined this community in 2013 and got into fangames, they were such a wonderful experience to me. They seemed like such a simple and fun concept, with a lot of creativity and compassion put into them. They are such a niche genre of games, with a comparatively small, but still sizeable following. I've always believed a community should be based around being able to talk freely, and share your experiences and achievements with anyone and everyone, and to communicate your interests and ideas as freely as you want. Little could I have expected, when I started trying to play harder games, and felt like sharing my progress, I would get shit on by all kinds of people. People who were either elitists, or, for lack of a better term, bullies. I could name all kinds of people guilty of this, but frankly, it isn't worth it at this point. I vividly remember my experience trying to play through Kamilia 2, being excited whenever I made progress, and being interested in all sorts of different aspects about the game. Whenever I wanted to talk about these things, though, I would just get swept under the rug, like my thoughts and feelings did not matter at all, or like I should not have been allowed to enjoy my time spent playing. Originally, this didn't quite bother me so much. After all, I was new to the community. I just supposed that maybe it took time for people to adjust to newcomers. As time went on, I cleared my first real fangame, NANG True End. It was such an enjoyable experience to me. I loved every last minute of it, and I was so ready to share my experience with the fangame community, or as I should refer to it, I Wanna Community, or IWC. Once again, my thoughts and feelings were thrown out the window, as if I had no right to talk about the very thing the community was supposed to be based around. As the years went by, I started going bigger and bigger, getting better, playing harder games, and trying to share my thoughts and interests. As time went on, I found myself butting heads with people against my will, with other people trying to make it a competition that I did not seek for. All sorts of people began acting like they were the king, like they had all the power and authority to say and do whatever they want, and to leave people in the trash however they pleased. When I originally started fangames, I did not care at all about death/time or clear times or anything like that, but with the large influx of elitism in the community, that changed very quickly. All those needle games I used to enjoy playing before? I heard it frequently said, or at the very least, implied, that I was not good enough to play a game, or clear a game, or to enjoy a game, or that I should not even bother, or that I'm just a bad player for having a high death/time, or clear time, or that I'm a disappointment to everyone for not being able to reach an unreasonably high standard. A standard that, day by day, was getting progressively higher and higher. Every week, it seemed like there were dozens of conversations in IWC, or other places of people being either elitist, or negative in some manner about people's ability to play games, or why they should care to play games, or what they should be playing, and all kinds of other ludicrous bullshit that continued to coalesce into a raging fire of toxicity, cancerous behavior, and general chaos. Eventually, in early 2017, one of my best friends who I looked up to for giving me so much motivation and creativity with fangames, was in the middle of this huge controversy surrounding him using rng set seed to make terribly unfun RNG bosses that might as well be nothing more than praying to get lucky many, many times in order to win into patterns. I agree that it was kind of a dumb idea, but the backlash was unheard of. All of these people who once claimed to love and respect him were suddenly hostile, and aggressive towards him, going so far as to try and doxx him, and harass him on various social media, and within IWC itself, over what? Cheating in fangames. Motherfucking niche 2D fangames of a game that is already in and of itself a highly questionable game that is super buggy, super broken, and currently stands as a centerpiece of what would be considered a "bad game", by most metrics. Imagine you pulled a small prank, or something of the likes, where you TAS'd a really hard game that everyone knows about, but no one can do, and then you said it was a "genuine" clear, mostly as a joke. Imagine getting shit on, and being sent numerous death threats, and being betrayed by all of these people in the community who act like they are "sovereign citizens", or some bullshit, like they've never done anything to wrong anyone, while these are the very same people who are being overly elitist and toxic, and downright hateful towards anyone who "isn't on their level". After this drama went down, it occured to me that IWC, or really, most of the fangame community, was not a very habitable place for a casual person just wanting to enjoy themselves. As time went on, it steadily just got worse and worse, and eventually, it was so awful that I had to coax myself into leaving fangames entirely. I needed a break from the craziness. Fast forward about 7 months. I came back to fangames, and started making steady progress once again, getting even better and better, and trying to just live a clean, healthy life of enjoying fangames with my friends... but it would never be that simple again. Every day from then on, I felt this dark and foreboding feeling in the back of my mind. I was caught in a virtual shitstorm of epic proportions, fueled entirely by elitist cunts and loonies who acted like they had some incredibly authority to tear down whoever they wanted, just based on their skill, performance, time, or whatever fucking stupid values they could think of. What was once a fun and enjoyable past time for me was now more akin to torture, constantly worrying about my performance in fangames, or my motivations, or why I played the games I continued to play. I cringed at the thought, but for some reason, I couldn't stop myself from going back to IWC. It was even worse than I had left it. The level of elitism was out of control, and there were specific people who I do honestly believe made the community a terrible fucking place that should've burned to the ground. Never the less, I tried to simply ignore this, and try my absolute hardest to enjoy playing fangames. Many more months came and went. I began to always feel this tension, and I was always passive-aggressive about anything fangame related. I was in a state of pure agony, being harshly reminded at every turn of my head of the elitism and ever-growing toxicity in the community. I began complaining to my close friends about it constantly, urging them that the community is a shithole that should die in a fire. One day, I saw more and more elitist cancer being spewed forth into IWC, and I had had enough. I was going to prove myself by trying to clear something really hard, just so I could try to reason with people to stop. I set my sights towards Sinewave, a really mediocre needle collab that is quite difficult. I would say it's kind of like a harder Seven Colors in a way, but even less fun, purely for the fact that a lot of the areas were full of segments that were way too dumb and unbalanced for their own good. Nevertheless, After a lot of struggle, I cleared it. In the time right before I cleared it, there was someone who said Sinewave was one of the hardest games ever... but when I got to the end of that game and was talking to him about it? That suddenly changed to "Oh, Sinewave is easy EXCEPT for one save". I was not happy about this, and it took everything within me not to let the inner hostile in me that had sprouted and grown from years of exposure to toxic fangame community behavior take over me. More time passed, and one evening, I was talking to some of my friends, and one particular friend of mine suggested I play Lap Around. I had no reason to ever play this game, but he urged me to. I hesitantly began what would eventually become the single worst journey I have ever had the pleasure of embarking on. As days went on, this friend of mine who had originally shown so much care and compassion for me cleared Soulless, and from that moment on, it was as if he had changed. He was no longer the friend I had one had. He started constantly saying that I was bad for no reason, never offering any context or point as to why he felt the need to belittle me like this. I pushed on, more and more, straining myself to a point of delirium. I was getting closer and closer to clearing Lap Around, and the closer I got, the more I felt like I was being pressured to clear it, the more unfun it became, and the more I felt like I was being belittled. There was a voice of reason that kept trying to tell me that I was not doing good enough, and that it didn't matter. My "friend", who at this point, I began to try to distance myself from due to him becoming a fucking asshole, kept saying more and more dumb shit to me, even going so far as to insist that I'm bad if I don't clear Lap Around. By the time I was at the final save, I was so mentally, physically, and psychologically broken and exhausted. I wanted it to be over. After a grueling 10 straight hours of trying my absolute hardest, I somehow miraculously finished. I cried so much, thinking to myself that I had done it. The pain would go away, the torture was over. These fucking assholes would stop belittling me for not meeting their ridiculous standards, for I had reached the absolute precipice. Oh how wrong I was. This person continued to push my restraints further and further, until I got so fucking fed up with his childish, cancerish, autistic bullshit that I told him to fuck off, to the point that me and most of my friends deserted him. Of course, being a sociopath, he could only reason that I was the one being unreasonable, despite the fact that he was pulling on strings that spanned across 6 long years of being mentally abused by elitist fucking idiots in the fangame community, and treated as if I don't belong, or like my opinion didn't matter. In the past 2 weeks, I've tried to just settle down and not worry about things. IWC is supposedly not as bad as it once was, but that doesn't matter. The damage had already been done. I had been all but worn down to a mindless, brainless, emotionally broken pulp. I would constantly freak out, and bitch to my friends about how fangames aren't fair, and that I've lost all of my free time being forced to do stupid shit I never cared for. Forcing myself to try to finish things purely because I might as well be braindead. 2000+ hours of fangame experience, and what do I have to show for it? 3 fangames that I spent my heart and soul grinding to clear, just so I could both prove a point, and make nay-sayers shut their pathetic fucking mouths, but unfortunately, I didn't end up doing either of those things. At the beginning of this story, I stated that I've deleted all of the fangames I had. I wish to suffer no more from this precarious, never-ending torture. I would 100%, seriously, with no exaggeration by any means, rather not have a computer, or for that matter, I would rather just go get a job and work 12 hours a day every day, rather than continue to live in an endless memory of pure fucking struggle, rage, torture, and desperation. To anyone who reads this, you can try to tell me that some of these things didn't happen, or that ALL of these things didn't happen. You can try to tell me I'm being unreasonable all you want, or you can try to lure me back however you want. You can try to argue with me with whatever broken, babbling, retard logic you can possibly muster, but the bottom line is, your community is a fucking cesspool that has not only made my life substantially worse, but effectively killed and motivations, interest in games, and dreams for people that I could've hoped for. In short, You are all fucking clowns, and your parents should never have allowed you the ability to use a computer, let-alone be a part of this community. Your toxicity, your elitism, your obligations, your priorities, your loathsome, outright fucking unfair and unreasonable prejudice towards people at any point in time is something I will always live with. You might say "Well, just get over it. The past is the past". Sure, it was long ago, and sure, the community MIGHT be better now, but some scars never heal, and a several year long fight with your unnecessary cancer is not something that I'm going to be able to easily forgive, or forget about. The only other thing I can recommend for your community is to either repent for your actions, completely start over, or fucking burn. I don't care which option you pick. Just remember that when you shit on someone's dreams and aspirations, and try to downplay their emotions and feelings towards something, especially the thing that your community is based around, for multiple years, and constantly try to play it off with the excuses of "Oh, it's just a joke, why are you mad?", or "Why do you even care, it's other people's opinions, and other people being dumb", you have a lot of power over your words. I've heard someone ask me why I let words effect me like this. The answer is, I don't. It's the fact that you're shitty fucking community thought it necessary to put so much emphasis on your words, to act like your final death/time in a fangame really meant so fucking much that you had to exile several people across several years, or that you thought cheating that was ultimately just an elaborate joke was worth trying to doxx someone over. I hope the 90% of you responsible are happy with your actions over the past several years. I hope you feel just as much shame and regret as I do for having to write a whole story over JUST how cancer your community is, and the problems it has caused. Goodbye. Sincerely, Nick