First off, I want to apologize for the pretty incoherent journals I have made previously. I'm 100% fine now and can write with clarity and calmness.

So to start, my experience on FA on a "regular" furry was peaceful and drama-free. I never felt unwelcome and the community was friendly. However, I eventually discovered the babyfur/littlefur community and really want to be a part of it, as I had discovered my interest in ABDL and the idea of cute slice of life stories revolving around such an early period in life was so wholesome and comforting to me. Despite my efforts though, there was always a sense of alienation. Still that wasn't too discouraging at first because it takes time for others to become familiar with you. But I never quite was able to find my "place" in the community. Everyone already had their cliques. Even still it wasn't too disheartening as I didn't feel actively unwelcome.

At least until an encounter with a particular user, who is no longer around. An important thing to note is that this user was HUGELY popular and EXTREMELY influential and was at the time basically one of the "big names" in the babyfur community who was admired by most of the community. So it wasn't just some nobody like myself who were on equal footing in terms of social standing. The "receipts" so to speak have been lost to time, so I can unfortunately only go off on my memory and trust that I can be taken on my word. I had made a journal, doing one of those memes that was something along the lines of "describe the following events in your life with the title of a song" or something like that. Now for context, I had been struggling with suicidal ideation ever since I was about 6 years old, though I kept it mostly to myself because I don't wish to burden others and it's honestly uncomfortale for me to talk about. I can't remember what the prompt was, but I do recall writing the song title "Behind the Crimson Door" by HIM as one of the answers as a way to express those feelings in the meme. This user made a cruel joke about my answer, something along the lines of "Behind the Crimson Door are you on your period or something lol"

Now that's bad on its own, but considering the context made it offensive on an entirely new level. I don't recall exactly how I responded, but I did respond essentially saying such a comment is unwelcome as it's rude and insensitive. They returned with basically saying I'm an oversensitive sjw and accused me of being a hypocrite because in my description I wrote that I tended to have a "dark sense of humor" and should welcome his "gross" jokes. He also said something along the lines that I should accept it because I am "a woman". For more context, I am assigned female at birth, and had struggled with dysphoria ever since puberty. At the time I was unaware that was even a "thing" and that I could identify as anything other than female. So, my fursona at the time was female. It wasn't until many years later when I learned of dysphoria and that it was possible to experiment with ones gender identity - in fact, it was something I was in the midst of doing at the time. So again, taking issue with what he had said, I explained how the song title was representative of suicidal ideation and that he shouldn't be making jokes in regards to that and told him that I wasn't a woman.
I believe he then made a snarky remark about me being "mentally ill", to which I expressed that a large portion of the furry community struggles with mental illness so when he makes "jokes" like that he's not only being cruel to me, but also to the furry community as a whole. He, of course, paid no attention to context and accused me of calling all furries mentally ill, and refused to listen to anything I said.

Soon after, I discovered he made a journal about me. He didn't mention my name specifically, but it was very obviously about me and the argument we had. It was a journal filled with extreme misrepresentations of what I had said and outright lies. He made slanderous remarks about me and numerous accusations including calling me "sexist" due to not identifying with my birth sex. This journal got TONS responses from a large portion of the babyfur community talking about how awful I supposedly was. Including people who I had been on good terms with prior. I was incredibly upset by this, and did something incredibly stupid as a result because I was young and autistic - I tried to defend myself in the comments. This lead to a harassment campaign against me by both him and his friends, and they accused me of harassing him.

I felt backed into a corner and I had people parroting his lies as well as mocking me for talking about issues that were deeply personal to me. So I abandoned my original account. This happened maybe about 7 years ago. But it has still haunted me ever since and tainted my experience here. I still wanted to post art, however, so I made this account about a year later.

Still, I felt as though I had to be in hiding. I was fearful of him and his influence. I had to distance myself from all his associates - which essentially meant about 70% of the entire babyfur community. It was, and still is, hard to find others who didn't have ties to this person in some way. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before a similar, though smaller incident occurred with another "big name" in the community, one who is still VERY relevant. 6 years ago this person acted in a very insensitive and rude manner towards a good friend of mine who had stuck with me through all of this. In their rudeness, they used a racist phrase, and when my friend called them out on it, instead of apologizing, they acted in a defensive, dismissive, and passive aggressive manner not just towards them but also toward anyone, including myself, who tried to explain to her what was wrong with what she said. A lot of people consider this person their favorite artist, and it seems most of the fandom are either friends with her or look up to her. This is a major contributor to me feeling unwelcome.

It unfortunately doesn't stop there though. There is someone who has essentially taken the "place" of the one who harassed me. There was a struggling person that I was friendly with who were dealing with a similar situation. This person made a very tone deaf and dismissive response to just block them. I expressed how it's not that easy when you're dealing with someone who is big in the community and tried to help the friendly person by advising them that they might want to do what I did to try to minimize the harassment. They (not the friendly person) responded to me and implied they were all too familiar with what happened with me, defending his harassment and essentially calling me stupid. As this is yet another well-known user who has ties with many in the community, the pool of people I feel safe around shrunk ever still.Ironically, this was the first person I ever did block and mostly didn't think too much of it.

Though eventually this person found their way to the only active user who I was on good terms with and also didn't have any associations with the previous two. Still, they wouldn't have known and I didn't hold it against them. Yet still, it did add to my sense of discomfort and feelings of entrapment. It didn't help that they were close to someone who had also been a jerk to me, but whatever, I didn't hold it against them. Though at the time I also was totally unaware that this person had also been a jerk to a mutual friend. But I'll get to that later.

More recently, around the start of this year, I had seen someone make consistently bigoted remarks in the comments on said friends content. As they never called them out on this and completely let it slide, talking with them as though they didn't say such things, I took it upon myself to explain to them that their comments are hurtful and why that is the case. I made absolutely sure to be friendly to them, communicating in good faith under the assumption they just didn't know any better. It ultimately turned into a huge thing where this person said some REALLY nasty stuff that go far and beyond the rules of the site, towards me, a friend, and every marginalized group you can think of, as all while trying to "justify" it by claiming to be Christian, yet clearly having absolutely no understanding of the Bible and actively going against their God's word. As this was more recent, I do have evidence, and had reported them, though nothing seems to have been done about them. Either way I realized dealing with them was a waste of time so I blocked them. Still, my friend was very much still involved with this person and didn't seem willing to understand just how bad the issue was, even though this was far beyond a mere personal problem and goes into this person being unhealthy for the site as a whole. It also didn't help that in response to me venting about the behavior by another mutual friend - described in prior journals, they sung praises of both of these parties while completely ignoring what I had said. I wasn't expecting them to cut ties with them or anything, but you'd expect a friend to at least express some sort of sympathy rather than praising the people who are giving you a hard time.

I am now also under the belief that the ex mutual friend has been making active efforts to try to move in on those who I had been associating with and trying to get them to cut ties with me - but while I do have my reasons to believe this, it is mere speculation at this point. Still, their behavior is suspicious and further generates these feelings of alienation from the community.

Anyway, after this, both me and a friend reconnected with the person who had been a jerk to us. Things seemed to be going well, and we seemed to collectively manage to get the mutual friend to understand the harms of the behavior from that particular bigot. Without any prompting they told me that they are done associating with that person. I thought, well, that's good as long as its their own decision and not because they felt pressured or anything. But then, in a conversation with the reconnected friend, I was accused of "telling me all the things you don't like about me" in response to me providing a different perspective in regards to what others see as "rude" or "polite", where I was basically explaining that sometimes being more blunt comes off as a good thing in certain situations because it expresses that you are taking the situation, or other person seriously, and that responding in an overly friendly manner in such situations can actually be very rude and give off the impression that you're not taking it seriously and don't care, as well as coming off as passive aggressive. This person turns around after what I said using exactly the type of tone I described, saying stuff like they "wish me well" and hope I can hang around with other people who "suit me more", in this context, basically reading like "fuck you I don't care what you say and I don't want to talk to you anymore". Something that would have actually come off as more polite had they just gone right out and say it. After this I realized that the person who I thought was my friend was only causing me more hardship with their ignorance especially as they've surrounded themselves with people who treat me like trash and actively antagonize me. I even found out they had lied about cutting ties with the bigot. This person who I once saw as a pillar of the community had repeatedly shunned and disregarded me and had abandoned our journey in learning and growing as people as we tried to navigate a world that was hostile to us. I realized then, they had become part of that hostile world.

So I made those incoherent messages about leaving, having something of a mental breakdown I suppose. I felt ever more trapped, having nowhere to go and repeatedly betrayed by those I had trusted. And honestly, I still do. I have no more illusions of having a sense of security and safety and a community to belong to. I'm not alone in the world as a whole - I have an extremely loving partner, a kind mother, and a few friends. and I'm very very thankful for them. But in terms of communities, especially the babyfur community, I have seen that I am and always will be an outcast.

And yet. I like drawing, I like writing. I like slice of life fictional stories. I like furry characters. I like sharing what I create, and seeing what others create. I want to share and be shared to. There aren't many places to indulge in this hobby in an organized fashion. I've still been working slowly to establish a more robust portfolio and improve as an artist in order to take commissions. I can't just abandon everything. I appreciate the few who have stayed with me through all of this. I know that despite everything I shouldn't give up, even though it hurts every time I come here from the experiences I have had. That is why even though I think it's a lost cause socially, I will continue to post. So I felt the need to explain everything that had contributed to my strange behavior, and can only hope that others can be understanding and maybe come to understand it as well. And please don't antagonize anyone because of what I said, as I want all this drama to be put to rest rather than exacerbated. Maybe someday these events will no longer haunt me and I can come here without stress. As for anyone who has taken the time to read this long journal, thank you for listening.