General Content Warning for this entire write-up, so everyone can have a good time: - Extensive discussion of topics related to mental illness, including self-harm, suicidal ideation, mania / bipolar disorder, distortion of truth, medication, involuntary hospitalization, medical abuse in a hospital setting, and romanticization of mental illness. - Non-detailed mentions of domestic violence (implied abuse by intimate partner and parents) and sexual / gender-based violence (including rape, child sexual assault, grooming, sex trafficking and torture). These last few items feature prominently in one installment, pertaining to a work of fiction; descriptions may be a bit more specific/detailed in that segment, but not graphic. - Mentions and quotes of unchill bigoted behavior, including ableism (mental and physical), white nonsense / white fragility / racism, fatphobia, prejudice against drug users.
Additional CWs may be added at the beginning of specific segments when relevant. While these are heavy topics, the tone of this write-up is generally light-hearted and aims to entertain. If this approach sounds uncomfortable or trivializing, this may not be a good read for you; please trust your gut!
*
Picture this: it's the early 2010s, somewhere in the western world. Instagram is a novelty, Harvey Weinstein runs Hollywood, almost no one on Earth leans one way or the other about RNA vaccines, and Donald Trump is that one real estate guy you vaguely remember from Home Alone 2. New player Lady Gaga is the most interesting thing to have happened to pop since Madonna, and the whole industry is attempting to catch up; Miley Cyrus is the chick who used to be on Hannah Montana; Melanie Martinez hasn't hatched yet. The time of Oddball Concept Divas is dawning just below the horizon.
You're a Bowie-loving student who skipped goth night at the club to tag along with your art school friends for a very special evening. You're a giddy sixteen-year old rocking cat ears, purple Wet 'n Wild eyeliner, a polyester petticoat, and a coffin-shaped backpack. You're an effete theater kid who sewed his own waistcoat for the occasion, but won't dare wear it to school the next day. You're a buff, bearded dude in a Venom shirt who's trying not to look too excited, since your girlfriend supposedly had to drag you here. You're a slightly bemused parent leaning against the back wall of the venue, sipping a warm half-pint, wondering if this isn't all a bit dark for a tween. (“It's called 'Victoriandustrial', mom,” you've been told in the car, “and it's not dark, it's art.”)
On stage is a pink-haired woman, with red porcelain-doll lips and a heart painted on her cheek. Among a set of antique consoles, twee tchotchkes, teacups and plastic rats, she pounces and twirls in glittery platform boots, tattered striped stockings, and a tightly laced crystal-studded corset that looks like it's splattered in blood. This is ostensibly a concert, but there is no live band. Where one would expect a drum kit or a bass, three bedazzled burlesque vixens act as back-up singers and dancers, with the occasional vaudeville act – a fire-twirling number, a fan dance, throwing pastries and spitting tea into the audience. Lots of wholesome girl-on-girl kissing, too. The music on the backing track is a genre-bender of clanging beats and beeps, lofty orchestral strings, and the frantic hammering of a MIDI harpsichord, as the pink-haired frontlady sings of heartache and betrayal and drowning. Think if the Brontë sisters had invented industrial rock.
The audience gasps in excitement when the lady whips out a vamped-out wireless electric violin. With rockstar cool and virtuoso poise, she leans into the instrument, touches the bow to the strings, and tears out a single plaintive, impeccably distorted high note. Then her fingers go wild, and for a few seconds, everything is perfect suspended animation. Uncannily perfect, almost. Just behind you, you hear someone whisper: “Wait, is she miming it?”
*
Forgive the theatrical intro, but I had to set the stage for... the drama. And I do mean drama in the thespian sense of the term! This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Shakespeare play: wordy and confusing, but it's neat how the main character's opening lines foreshadow the tragic climax. It's a Greek tragedy for the digital age – if, instead of killing his dad and banging his mom, after becoming king, Oedipus was doomed to becoming uniquely obnoxious. It's The Rocky Horror Show under the grim direction of Samuel Beckett. Like all good theatre, this story is about how fiction bleeds into reality – through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how all the world's a stage and all that.

WHO IS EMILIE AUTUMN, AND WHAT'S THE DRAMA?

Here's the Broadway Weekly blurb, so you can decide whether the show is worth your time: Emilie Autumn, also known as EA, is a US-American alternative singer-songwriter, author, and actor. She became known in alt circles in the mid-2010s for her violin skills, unique fashion, outspoken stances on feminism and mental health advocacy, and the way she dramatized and sublimated her own life story in her art. In 2009, she self-published a semi-autobiographical book that became a sort of bible to her creative universe and fandom. She toured extensively and enjoyed niche, but considerable success until the mid-2010s – with hordes of devoted fans adopting her fashion sense and lingo, and crediting her music for getting them through dark times.
For the past twelve years or so, EA has mostly been focused on adapting her book into a stage musical, releasing two more albums of songs intended for the libretto. At the time of this write-up, it has been six years since the last album and a decade since the last live show. Although she still talks about the musical as an ongoing, Broadway-bound project, in recent years, she's often gone dark for months at a time on social media. There is no forum, no large Discord, no active community to speak of; comments are restricted on her currently-inactive Instagram and blog.
Who is she hiding from, you ask? Why, you've probably guessed it: the hordes of devoted fans whom she infuriates every time she does anything.
And what are they furious about? (Or frustrated, flummoxed, or plain ol' flabbergasted?) Well, it depends who you ask. For some, it's disappointment in her artistic and marketing choices (what are fans for?). Others cite unkept promises or absurd release delays. For others yet, it's the AliBaba merch sold at jaw-dropping markups with three paragraphs of purple prose in the product description.. Or maybe it was the angry rants on Twitter? Okay, it's the casual bigotry that she staunchly denies or dismisses. It's the criticism she can't take. It's the fact that she won't stop lying about her own life! Either way, I don't personally know of any fanbase that has been so consistently exasperated, for so many years, and for such a diverse array of reasons, by their favorite artist.
In truth, each individual mini-scandal isn't all that juicy or scandalous. Nobody died, no one got sued; nothing of significant value, other than time and sanity, was taken away from anyone. What I find interesting here is the years and years of bizarre parasocial codependency (and antagonism) between a fragile woman who became addicted to her own poppycock, and an obsessive fanbase who cared way too much not to take it personally.
Before we even get to EA's relationship with her fans, you're going to need some lore about EA herself. A “Hobby History” of sorts. Strap in! There's romance, tragedy, laughter, character development, variety numbers, numerous costume changes, (actual) celebrity cameos – and based on how long this OpenOffice doc already is at the time of my writing this, we're probably going to need several intermissions too. This write-up is link-heavy, both with receipts and with additional watching and listening material. Not all of them need to be clicked in order to understand the story; I'm merely providing the rabbit holes. I've tried to make things more easily navigable by including a little glossary about the nature of links; one emoji-indicator carries over the next link until I use a different one.
🪞 = picture / visual 🎵 = music 📺 = video 📝 = primary source / receipt 🔍 = press article / write-up / further reading 🎤 = song lyrics / spoken word audio 🐀 = anonymous fan confession 🦠 = reaction / meme

BAROQUE BEGINNINGS: THE VIOLIN YEARS

VampireFreaks: Do you ever smile to yourself knowing your old music teachers might be seeing your success? EA: I smile to myself knowing they might be dead. (Long-lost interview, late 2000s)

Born in Malibu in the late 70s, Emilie Autumn, often known as EA, was originally trained as a classical violinist.
By her account, she started playing the violin at age 4, and was homeschooled at age 9 so that she could focus on her instrument. After stints at various performing arts colleges, some rather prestigious, she dropped out of formal schooling in her mid-to-late teens to embark on a solo violin career.
In 2001, after disappointing experiences with major record companies, she created her own label, Traitor Records, and released a EP of chamber music, with minor success. The stuffy industry of classical music didn't “get” the twenty-something manic-pixie-fiddler, who played Bach just a bit too fast, but with electric stage presence – wearing period corsets, combat boots, and the occasional fairy wings. But EA evidently knew that there was an audience for that somewhere.
And that somewhere – drumroll – was Illinois.

VW: What do you most hope to accomplish? EA: Everything. (‘Virtual World Radio’ Interview, 2002 📝)

ENCHANT ERA: BRUSHES WITH FAME ON FAERIE WINGS

What if I'm an ocean, far too shallow, much too deep? (...) What if I'm a siren singing gentlemen to sleep? (“What If”, 2003 🎵)

Soon, EA relocated from her native California to Chicago. There, in between odd jobs, she veered away from baroque and began performing her own “fantasy rock” stylings at piano bars, holiday fairs and local venues – and building a decent following through her LiveJournal, website, and IRL friends. People loved the whole renegade genius thing, loved the violin, loved the nightingale voice, loved the fairy wings and costumes🪞, loved the handmade merch and general disdain for The Business, loved her deadpan humor and bookish nerdiness. In 2003, she released her first LP, Enchant 🎵 – an ethereal, introspective indie-pop joint, born under the sign of Imogen Heap, with a moon in Fiona Apple and Tori Amos rising.
Everything about EA's act was exquisitely DIY, personal, and intricate. For instance, the Enchant booklet folded out into a Masquerade-style puzzle of her own design.🪞 The first person to solve the puzzle would win “the Wings, Ruff, Fan and Scepter of the Faerie Queene herself” – all lovingly handmade by EA, and depicted in peak 2003 graphic design on the booklet. For months, YEARS after Enchant came out, people poured over the cryptic metaphors and literary references, the historical symbolism and visual puns of the artwork, looking for hints and patterns. They read every fan chat, every interview, every relevant Shakespeare play, hoping to decipher the inner workings of EA's mind and find new keys to the puzzle. Sure, it's been two decades now and no one's ever managed to crack the damn thing 🔍, which is by now widely assumed to be flawed and unsolvable; still, it's the kind of zany, brainy, immersive experience that tends to cultivate a niche but hyper-invested fanbase.
So it makes perfect sense that underground aficionada and internet frontierswoman Courtney Love (she haunted public AOL chatrooms as early as 1995! 🔍) would take an interest. Just a few months after releasing Enchant, EA was off to southern France to record violin and vocals for Courtney's new solo album; a few months after that, in early 2004, she joined Courtney's band on a brief tour to promote the record.
Alas, no cigar: America's Sweetheart flopped. Maybe because most of those summer recording sessions were ultimately lost to an engineering oopsie; maybe because Courtney was having an especially rough year – and going through all the “rock-bottom moments” that she would discuss in group therapy, later that fall, when she began her sobriety journey at court-ordered rehab. EA, a former homeschool kid who had never done drugs, seems to remember the tour as a generally terrifying experience; she later stated, with some bitterness, that the experience was not worth the time it had taken away from her own solo career.
But it was a good year for TV appearances! Here she is on the David Letterman Show in March 2004, rocking out on a perfectly inaudible violin as C-Love fades in and out of her own body. 📺 She also landed a cute tutorial segment on HGTV's Crafters: Coast to Coast, making sushi-shaped soap and fairy wings. In December, she accompanied Billy Corgan for a Christmas song on a Chicago station.
All of this was chronicled in quirky, wordy posts on her blog – interspersed with late-night musings about casual misogyny in the media 📝, including against Courtney, handmade crafts and clothing auctions, candid pictures of outings with friends in Chicago... as well as periodic updates on the progress of her next opus: Opheliac.

God, too much to even begin to tell right now, and I’m recording anyway, but I can give you this update: I just finished yesterday recording violin parts and backing vocals for B. Corgan’s first single (...) More later, recording piano for my new track “GOD HELP ME”…why do I torture myself with my own self-inflicted drama…or is it a way of exorcizing…yes, I’ll go with that one for now…☠ (“Whirlwind...”, December 2004)

By that point, EA was starting to be more open about her conflicted relationship with what would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. The galaxy-brain moments, the trance of creative frenzies, the liminal high of going three days without sleep, the magic... the crippling sensitivity, the restless anxiety, the Zoloft that one both needs and hates, the ever-lurking suicidal thoughts. As EA gradually revealed over the course of 2004, Opheliac would be an exploration of the “mad woman” archetype. The title was a medical neologism for “the syndrome of Ophelia”, as in the tragic character from Hamlet 🔍, driven to insanity and ultimate self-destruction by the fuckboys who rule her life. Here's EA explaining it in her own words. 🎤 The album would dive into how psychiatry and romantic relationships are governed by old misogynistic tropes, and how the “mentally ill” label is used to silence and downplay the justified anger and hurt of abused women.
In a striking case of life imitating art (are you picking up on the theme yet?), this concept was about to become more painfully relevant than ever to EA's personal existence.
CW: implied partner abuse, suicidal ideation.

DISENCHANTMENT: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

In the lake, you will find me Behind your house, behind your house (...) My ocean is bluer than the heart you had to break My sea is deeper than your lake (“In the Lake”, 2005 🎵)

Where were we? Ah yes, the Christmas song with Billy Corgan at the end of 2004. Around that time, EA was also recording violin parts and backing vocals for his upcoming solo album. 🎵 They had presumably connected through Courtney, they both lived in Chicago, I guess something clicked.
In January of 2005, EA abruptly went off of her meds, broke up with her live-in boyfriend-slash-bassist, packed up her violin and corsets, and moved into Corgan's mansion. In March of 2005, she posted very melancholy lyrics about drowning in a lake to haunt a deceitful lover. The post was entitled“In The Lake (The Zoloft is calling my name...)” 🎤📝. Later, after the song was released as a B-side, EA disclosed that it had been intended as a public suicide note 📝.
Blog entries from that time touched on a “whirlwind of action and emotion”, “changing residences” and feeling like “you're falling through the air, but you don't know if you'll hit the water or the rocks” 📝. But, EA being an expert vague-poster, her posts remained very elusive about what was going on, who was involved, and how it impacted her. (The specifics were pieced together years later, by fan-led forensic efforts – which, obviously, involved ascertaining the existence of an actual body of water in Billy Corgan's backyard 📝).
Whatever happened over the course of those months was never disclosed explicitly by EA, but is widely assumed to have inspired songs such as “Liar” 🎤, “Misery Loves Company”, “Let the Record Show”, and “I Know Where You Sleep”, , recorded that same spring. A solid quarter of the Opheliac tracklist – which was shaping out to be decidedly darker and grittier than Enchant.

You can lie to the papers, you can hide from the press (...) I know your tainted flesh, I know your filthy soul I know each trick you played, whore you laid, dream you stole I know the bed in the room in the wall in the house Where you got what you wanted and ruined it all I know the secrets that you keep I know where you sleep

Even as her personal blog posts grew more somber, nihilistic, and generally fed-up in the face of what she called “the worst breakdown of her young life”, even as the songwriting process had her rummage through traumatic memories [CW: CSA] 🎤, and even as the Corgan-adjacent trauma was compounded by various rushed moves and broken friendships over that summer and fall, EA remained remarkably (some might say frantically) prolific.
Other than progress on Opheliac, 2005 saw multiple violin collaborations with alternative bands, numerous auctions of, mh, visually strident “punktorian” fashion pieces 📝🪞 (“STRESS COUTURE!” 🦠📺), and an updated re-issue of her 2001 poetry collection, complete with audiobook. ("...The book has been selling like crack in a limo with Courtney Love (and believe me, I know)." - Ooooof, EA. Low-hanging fruit. 📝)
In October, she started recruiting:

WANTED: Hot goth bitch to join touring band of other hot goth bitches. (...) Must be able to: sing backing vocals in a wide range with excellent pitch, growl à la Kittie, handle minimal keyboard parts, push buttons/turn knobs with killer attitude, be extremely comfortable on stage in bloomers and a corset, reside in the Chicago area, know the difference between a crumpet and a scone, have at least one hidden talent. 📝

By winter, most of her blog post titles were written in THIS FORMAT!!!!!!!! In December, she announced that “Emilie Autumn and the Bloody Crumpets” would preview Opheliac live at the Double Door in Chicago, on Friday the 13th (ooh!) of the following month. “We are coming to destroy your world,” the post threatened enticingly. "Miss it and suffer. We really don't want to hurt you.” The flyer advertised a dress code:

Masquerade, Ophelias, green girls, Victorian insane asylum escapees, princes of Denmark, bloomered harlots and rogues – general burlesque ribaldry!

Exit diaphanous butterfly wings and elven tiaras 📺, enter the haunted murder-doll with the blood-red heart on her cheek; out with Elizabethan chamber-pop, in with Victoriandustrial. The fairy had to die to make way for the iconic, the sublime, the tragic, the ridiculous, the positively bananas...

OPHELIAC ERA: LET THE RECORD SHOW

EA: What's more interesting, and what's more fun to watch, than a crazy girl's self-destruction? Nothing. Nothing in the world. (The Opheliac Companion, 2008 🎤)
If I'm going down Then I'm going down good I'm going down Then I'm going down clean (...) The prettiest broken girl you've ever seen (“Let the Record Show”, 2006 🎵)

CW: mania, self-harm, abortion, suicidal ideation, hospitalization.
If you haven't gathered as much by now, what fans were witnessing in real time on EA's blog, without necessarily seeing it, was the ebb and flow of a months-long manic episode. That's not me armchair-diagnosing: EA herself has discussed penning and recording a lot of her best material in a trance-like rush, “when you're writing on the ceiling because there's not enough paper to contain your thoughts”.

...Once I became stable and healthy, I realized that I had no memory of how a great deal of my music had been created. I had written and even programmed most of my best work in a similar manic state, and, when stark raving sane, I didn’t know how to do it anymore, because the part of me that really composes never needed to know how to do it, it just did. (2019 Instagram post 📝)

It's not an uncommon experience for artists with bipolar disorder. Before you burn so hot that you wind up in the back of an ambulance, and/or before the pendulum swings back towards debilitating depression, the boundless energy, heightened sensitivity, and unexpected thought patterns associated with mania can lead to periods of prolific and effortless creation.
Mania also has the potential to lower your inhibitions, making you more bodacious, more quick-witted – more dazzling, more fun at parties, more dramatic. All traits that are valued in the entertainment industry, especially one that, with the rise of social media, was coming to rely increasingly on parasocial engagement and “personal branding”. Why would you refrain from oversharing, overreacting, overworking, overpromising, overcurating a fantasy image of yourself... when new industry models reward exactly that?
My point is that, in retrospect, “the end was built into the beginning”: all the things that would make fans go “What the hell, Emilie!” in subsequent years were brewing below the surface before the album even dropped.
In the summer of 2006, EA said goodbye to her Chicago friends and returned to California, where she moved in with her new beau, another Illinois-born guitarist with an impressive forehead: Brendon Small, of Dethklok/Metalocalypse quasi-fame. (If you're into that sort of thing: the orchestral strings on “Detharmonic”? Yep, that's EA! 🎵📺)
In September, Opheliac was released into the world. Expectations were high... And many sources agree it was a goddamn banger. It was ultrafemme, ultradark, unhinged, hilarious and deadly and brilliant. It had gnarly kitchen-sink drums layered under angelic string harmonies, fauxperatic swells, and guttural screaming. It had sarcastically self-aware double-entendres that were also literary references that were also musical notation jokes. You get the idea: it was the album that a small, but sizable demographic of tormented millennial teens had been waiting to obsess over. Some time in late 2005 or so, EA had signed with German label Trisol Records, which gave her access to better promotion, press coverage and touring opportunities in Europe when the album came out in the fall. By winter, she was on the cover of alternative mags, and the talk of the town on underground music webzines. Within a year, she was embarking on the first of three almost-back-to-back European tours.
It was around that time that EA started giving her fanbase a more defined, aesthetically on-brand identity. EA, funnily enough, disliked the term “fan” due to its proximity to “fanatic”, and started calling individual supporters “muffins” or the "Bloomer Brigade". (After The Book came out in 2009, they would become “Plague Rats”. You know how pets get weird if you re-name them too many times? I wonder if the same is true of fans.) Meanwhile, EA's fanbase as a collective – as well as her home, her recording studio, her online forum and her inner brainspace... – became canonically known as “The Asylum”. Cue infinite jokes about her fans being “committed.”
And they really were, in a slightly more intense way than your average indie-alternative fanbase. Many fans enthusiastically adopted facets of EA's mannerisms and lingo, which gave the fandom a definite LARP-ing bend; and the official forum did, in fact, offer a subforum for Asylum-themed role-play. (In a number of ways, the Asylum was basically Juggalos for socially anxious theater goths. Substitute the clown facepaint, Faygo, and hatchets for cheek-hearts, Earl Grey tea, and obsolete medical tools.) While there was always some side-eye at the embarrassingly candid, often very young Plague Rats who took the Asylum thing too seriously (always speaking in character and worshipping the ground Mistress Emilie walked on), a lot of people were quite thrilled to play romantic Victorian madhouse with their new favorite artist. Live shows were like costume balls. The forum thrived.
It was like Opheliac had opened a portal to this vibrant and inclusive alternate dimension, which the community was now bringing to life in the real world. And each tour brought more inmates (muffins, Plague Rats, you get it) to the Asylum. “Spread the Plague!” was the name of the game.
So, on paper, in the three years that followed Opheliac, EA kind of won the high-concept-indie-artist equivalent of the lottery. After going through her own personal hell of abuse, major upheavals and serious mental health crises, she had decided to gamble on a radically different tone and musical direction. She came out the other side with critical acclaim for her soul-baring record, tons of live shows with a badass girl squad, photoshoots so iconic they pop up on random Pinterest boards to this day, snazzy corporate sponsorships (including Manic Panic and RockLove Jewelry), and an exponentially growing fanbase who couldn't get enough of whatever she had to give. And she gave quite a lot!
Within those three years, in between tours, EA released A Bit O' This & That 🎵 (a compilation of demos and back-catalogue curiosities), Laced / Unlaced (a full-instrumental double album - one side was the baroque recordings from her late teens, the other was demented, distortion-heavy classical-prog), and three EPs packed with new songs, covers, remixes and bonus content. There was also a deluxe reissue of Enchant, without the puzzle, but with a brand new booklet of handwritten lyrics and marginalia. All came in lovely inter-matching digipaks that really made you want to collect them all – much like the handmade merch 📝🪞 that EA still sold on some legs of her tours. She spent time with the fans at most shows, eventually holding meet-and-greets and private showcases for VIP ticket-holders. She also released “The Opheliac Companion”, a kind of “director's commentary” of the album – roughly 10 hours worth of lyrical deep dives, microphone specs, tangents within tangents within tangents, and whacky (tipsy, sometimes unintelligible) banter between EA and her sound engineer🎤. On top of all that, she wrote, designed and self-published a fully illustrated 200-page coffee-table book, the first print of which sold out within a year. Not bad!
Of course, things that seem to good to be true usually are: at this stage in the story, EA is never as enthusiastically prolific as when her personal life is falling apart behind the scenes.
In the three years that followed Opheliac, along with soaring success, EA got to experience: more rapid-cycling between manic phases and the pits of depression, multiple harrowing medication adjustments, an very-much-unwanted pregnancy followed by a traumatic abortion, a suicide attempt, at least one inpatient stay, and a break-up in the aftermath of it all. There were also a few physical health scares that required hospitalization. On one occasion, she had to go off all her meds cold-turkey when they were confiscated at the EU border right before the start of a tour. In some pictures from her summer 2007 festival appearances, you can make out faint self-harm scars on her thigh through the layered stockings. (Obvious CW, for the morbidly curious.🪞(But if you weren't, would you still be reading?))
So yeah. EA was not doing great.
She didn't share any of these struggles with her fans in real time; her posts were all droll banter and updates on tours and releases. Most of what I just listed was disclosed in late 2009, in the autobiographical part of The Book. (The Book gets at least one instalment of its own. Bear with me, there's a LOT to unpack.) And The Book, while never specifying a timeline, kind of really made it sound like the Bad Stuff (the abortion, the suicide attempt, the hospital stay) had taken place a while back, before the release of Opheliac. In fact, EA plainly stated as much, citing “getting locked up and being put in the asylum" 📝 as the reason for the shift in sound between Enchant and Opheliac.
She repeatedly referred to herself as “stabilized” and “now properly medicated” in interviews. As far as the fanbase was concerned, she had triumphed over her abusers, turned trauma into beauty, and lived to pass on her story of survival. And now she had found balance and community and true acceptance of herself, all that good stuff – and all was fine and dandy within the Asylum. On stage, she sang about blind rage and all-consuming despair and general hopelessness, but she didn't actually feel like that – not anymore, right?
This narrative was both inspirational and quite convenient for the fans. We love our Mad Hatters 🎵📺, our Rainmen, our manic pixies. We love and celebrate “crazy” when it manifests as outside-the-box brilliance and/or bubbly eccentricity. But in my experience, even in spaces that ostensibly focus on "destigmatizing mental illness", positivity and support can quickly turn to rejection and awkwardness when your “quirks” manifest in more challenging ways – like through erratic decisions, aggressive or dishonest behavior, or increasingly untethered beliefs about yourself and the world. No matter how much people claim to “embrace the madness”, it just isn't that fun or in good taste for a large group to play-act ~ whimsical insanity ~ with someone who is for realsies mentally falling apart.
Before time has had time to do its thing, "revisiting your trauma" is just called ruminating. And it's rarely good for you, even when you commit some of greatest art in the process.
I think fans had to assume that there was some critical distance in EA's act, that these extreme negative emotions were all theater – because if they weren't, then the Asylum wasn't an empowering performance about healing from past hurt. It was more like a years-long reality show in which a woman picked at her wounds publicly, again and again, in real time, to the cheers of oblivious strangers who thought they were watching a play.
All I'm saying is that EA was essentially still in the thick of raw trauma when she became a poster-child for overcoming it; that the last thing a person needs, at such a vulnerable stage in their life, is an intense parasocial relationship with sad goth teenagers, let alone one centered around romanticized retellings of their own darkest moments; and that if more people had declined to actively engage in pretend-play that toed the line of self-harm... there is a chance that things might have turned out differently. Maybe EA would still be a successful musician whose career isn't plagued by conflict and mutual disappointment, and maybe some fans wouldn't have wasted years getting red in the face at an over-exposed mentally ill woman for not getting her shit together.
OKAY, THAT GOT HEAVY (and preachy), apologies and thank you for your patience. I will now quit my soapboxing, resume telling the story, and let you draw your own conclusion as our dark plot unravels.

EPILOGUE: DEAD IS THE NEW ALIVE

A quick taste of the poison A quick twist of the knife When the obsession with death, the obsession with death Becomes a way of life ("Dead is the New Alive", 2006 🎵)
I am still over-glorified My reasons to live Were my reasons to die But at least they were mine (“306”, 2006)

In summation: becoming an overnight success thanks to your darkest trauma will do things to person's mind.
As EA kept hyping up how much her fans meant to her, and what an amazing and inclusive and free-thinking motley crew the Asylum was, she was also growing more and more controlling of her increasingly large (and opinionated, and overall rather young) fanbase – and more generally, of the way people ought to talk to and about her.
It was during the Opheliac era that she started reveling in made-up stories about her own life. Then came the habit of losing her shit on fans that she perceived as ungrateful or disrespectful. It was also then that massive kerfuffles became routine on the merch and planning front, and EA's creative output started to routinely fall short of her promises. The more fans started raising legitimate complaints, the more defensive and uncompromising EA became in her public interactions. The more people expressed weariness of the Asylum theme, or started questioning EA's hot takes on mental health and feminism, the harder she doubled down on the Asylum lore and fictional universe. Which is where the drama really starts.
Alright, the time has come. Let's talk about The Book.
...Actually, let's not. I'm nearing my character limit, and you could probably use a break and a stretch after making it this far. This is our intermission, and we'll get to The Book in our next instalment.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned if you're interested in how it all comes tumbling down.

I was watching a YouTube video about VampireFreaks and 2000s goths. The YouTuber was talking about the subculture and what inspired some of the fashion, using various pictures of different goths, and I spotted a picture of me!
It definitely was a double take moment! I probably uploaded this picture to VampireFreaks at one point, otherwise I'm not sure how he got it, but I'm glad he used a good picture! 🤣

for context i live in nyc where thrift stores aren’t common, affordable or plus sized friendly. I’m trying my best to avoid sites like shein and cider bc their clothes are so cute tbh and I’m heavily low income but i want to stay ethical. But i can’t find anywhere !! anywhere where items are max $60 would be great. i’ve looked into VampireFreaks but idk if what they have is sustainable. Any help is appreciated!

This is gonna be long so yeah.
I guess I'll start from the beginning, I lost my virginity at a kind of young age (or what I'd guess is young), I thought I was in love but it turned out the guy was just using me to brag and it was his whole "thing." After he and his friends spread it around that I was "loose", it became a whole thing where my parents threatened legal action. The police didn't take it serious but my parents were rich enough to actually do something, so he and his family moved the hell away and when the rest of his friends graduated the bullying stopped.
My issues just began though. I was put into therapy for a short while and when my "stressors" had gone and I didn't exhibit any issues, my therapist deemed I had worked through my issues but he told my parents to keep a close eye in case anything reoccurs or if I have any new issues that need working out. My issue now though was sex.
While other girls were getting into relationships, I began hooking up with quite a few guys. While my city wasn't the biggest, it's super close to a whole load of big cities and guys would literally just drive into the city to hook up then bounce. I met a lot of guys from various social medias just to name a few: Myspace (before it died), myYearbook, Tumblr, Vampirefreaks, Scenekids and I even met a couple of guys from Chatroulette (one of which became obsessed with me), suffice to say I had indeed become "loose."
Most of the time it was just one-time things, but guys I had consistent hookups with were my "boyfriends." I never actually went on dates with them, it was purely just sex but they considered me their girlfriend and I had multiple at one time and would hide them from each other. While I was stupid in many ways during this time, I was never stupid enough to invite them to my place or give out my full name. So once my phone died and I got a new one I would pretty much lose contact with pretty much all of them.
Once VF and SK shut down I started slowing down with my online stuff and after the Tumblr purge I pretty much ceased altogether. Which was a good thing because it allowed me to fully focus on my studies, which was very much needed considering I decided to become a CRT.
During college I didn't really party as much as some would, I had dating apps for hookups and I was never one to go wild on alcohol, drugs etc. Despite my sex life I was kinda still a child at heart and I was blessed enough to travel and go to shows (Mostly Jonas Brothers, One Direction and Taylor Swift) and over the years I've been to a lot of shows.
And at one of these shows I met him, he was a photographer who was pretty successful not just at concert photography, but he was employed by huge publications and agencies for his work. At one of the local shows we got to talking and he was sweet as hell and we had chemistry and once the show was over we went back to my place and had sex. I never came during the sex but everything before and after was "perfect", like he was one of the most romantic people I'd known.
We ended up dating and it was not only the first actual dates I had been on but he was my first actual boyfriend. It wasn't about sex, but it was like the fantasy relationship.
Everything was going great, I was faithful to him and had no desire to stray and 6 months ago he proposed and I accepted. It was super romantic, he took me to Hawaii for the week and at sunset on Lanikai Beach he proposed and I was like halfway between passing out and my soul fully departing my body.
In the beginning of November he was contracted to be one of the photographers for the Eras Tour and I was so excited for him and bummed that I couldn't go with him for it because of work. He told me that he'll be back after the weekend, since he had some other stuff to do and he wouldn't be catching his return flight until late Sunday, I was understanding and thought I'd just be working and then watching my shows.
On the Friday however a friend from HS came into town and she wanted to party. I told her that I was never about that and she knew that, she began teasing me for being a lightweight, an old lady, boring etc until I agreed to come with her since I figured she was going to get blitzed so I might as well come, make sure nothing bad happens and be the designated driver.
When we got to the bar of a club, she pretty much pressured me again into doing shots, I said I would only do two since somebody had to drive us back, she scoffed and called me boring again but we did the shots.
I don't know if the shots were laced or if I'm super lightweight or if I took more but the rest of that night was a blur, I remember dancing with my friend and then a couple of different guys and not being in control, it felt like I had blacked out and was having a super vivid dream. However it wasn't a dream, because the next time I was conscious, I was laying on my stomach but I felt a sensation like I was moving and the more I woke up I realized I was being fucked.
Looking back I should have pushed the guy off and filed a report, however I moved my hips back to push him back so I could grab the headboard of the bed and push myself up onto my knees into doggy and I willingly had sex with him and I came twice. Thankfully he pulled out and came on my back and ass since I was not on birth control (my and my fiancé always used condoms).
After he came he laughed and said we both needed to clean ourselves up and said I could share the shower with him before he would drive me home. Another chance to refuse him and not cheat on my boyfriend again and I didn't take it, we had shower sex for what seemed like forever and then we got dressed and he asked where I lived, I told him that I just needed to go back to the club since my car is there and he agreed.
On the way back to the club he put his hand down my pants and began fingering me and I gave him road head, even to the point where we had arrived back at the club but I was still sucking him, so he parked up and literally fucked my mouth and throat until he came. Before I left he asked for my number and I just ignored him and left the car because guilt had began to set in.
I went back home and cried. My boyfriend later messaged me saying that his flight had been delayed and I just fell asleep for most of the day. When my boyfriend came back he noticed something was wrong because of my puffy eyes and everything and I told him that I was ill. I took a couple days off of work and while I was guilt-ridden, I started masturbating thinking about what had happened and after I cum I get filled with regret/post-nut clarity.
Considering there wasn't much to do since I was supposed to be ill, this happened multiple times a day and eventually something broke and I signed up to one site in particular and a couple of apps and I started hooking up with random men. It wasn't like it was spread out like earlier in my teens, I was fucking multiple men in a day.
And while I had a type/standards, that had all completely gone. I was sucking and fucking almost anyone that showed an interest and were really about meeting and the majority of them weren't my type, were twice my age or didn't even have good dick. I also specified sucking because some of the men were married and wouldn't go beyond oral.
I have no idea what is wrong with me, if it's latent hypersexuality, a prolonged manic episode or breakdown but I know it's not going to end well and I'm frightened about the hurt it will cause, but I just can't seem to stop myself. I've tried deleting the apps and everything but the urge overcomes me.
Even today I have three "dick appointments" lined up and my fiancé is just going to think I'm working late or that I'm at a friend's place again.

This subreddit is dead, but does anyone know any websites that sell mall goth clothing besides vampirefreaks i dont know what flair to use so yeahh

My VampireFreaks sceney-gothy selfies (my username was Nekromantis) plus a bonus 2013/14 selfie :3 You can tell I was kinda super into the zombie craze XD The last one, I'd bleached my hair but I came out looking like I had calico hair (which I kinda miss, frfr) Filterz fer daaayyyzzz X3 the negative filter was so cool >w<

Hello everyone, for years now I am looking for a specific song that I liked on VampireFreaks.com back when it was a social network site with band profiles. There was this female artist, I am not sure about the name (may have contained "trix" or "trixx"). The song was called "Music 4 machines". I tried looking on youtube, but can't find it.
I would be grateful if someone would remember it and maybe provide the artists name.
Thanks

WHAT WAS IT CALLED? It’s driving me mental?!?!
Does anybody remember this website or what it was called? It was neither MySpace, nor Bebo.
From my own teenage experience it was location based and used by teens and young adults as a chatting and dating site.
The background was black. You had a menu on the left hand side. Your profile was your picture at the top and usually an excruciatingly manually designed, centred profile with various sections that you had to put colours in with HTML hex codes Etc. Especially for LGBT alt teens. I think it also had a music player on the right hand side too maybe?
Again it was mostly used by alt teens in general. . Maybe 2005-7? Maybe had something to do with vampires or werewolves as a base idea? It’s so frustrating.
Edit 2: thank you to deviouslypink - it was Vampirefreaks. I’m having an influx of memories now like “oh what’s your vf?” Etc.

im tryna get the medium jungleland camo pants on vampirefreaks but the size chart is different than on tripp nyc
on trippnyc site, a size medium is a 35" waist (fully ext) but on vampirefreaks a size medium is 32-34" and a large on vampirefreaks is 34-36" should i still just get medium or should i get large?

My partner and I are new to the world of lingere and bought a lot of product off of AliExpress. We thought we were getting a deal but unfortunately the quality is just simply not there.
Our local sex shop sells lingere for $600 for a single set and that's simply out of our price range.
Recently we've found moeflavor.com, vampirefreaks.com, dollskill.com and we're optimistic about them especially because they seem to cater to our roleplaying interests. Then we found out that Dolls Kill has major ethical issues surrounding them and steals designs.
So what I'm trying to ask is, can we please get some recommendations for outlets/websites that sell kinky lingere or cute + sexy clothes with a reasonable price and decent quality? Bonus points for not being surrounded with huge controversies.
Thank you for your time!
Edit: Moe Flavor is currently selling a Winter Plush Cow Bikini with gloves, stockings, headband, shawl and wrist cuffs for about $170 USD so that is our standard for now. I'd like to believe it's 2-3 steps above Aliexpress.
Edit 2: Cosplay/roleplay with and without bandage is something we're both really into as well. Maid/cow/succubus/boss/sailor outfit/etc. All of it.

It must have been 2009 to 2012?

This definitely isn't directed only towards people who passionately loved MCR and Nightmare Before Christmas a tiny bit too much.
I'm sure every single one of you was fun in your own way. 🤣
Personally, I played a bit too much World of Warcraft and talking to girls on Vampirefreaks. But we all made mistakes.

The Queen Porcelain Black/Porcelain and The Tramps 👑
Porcelain and The Tramps is a project from the 2000's created by Alaina Marie Beaton (aka Porcelain Black). Whether or not there were additional members is still up for debate based on statements by Porcelain herself and other factors. PATT takes industrial sounds and combines them with synth pop elements. Sadly the music was only really put up on Myspace and I believe VampireFreaks (when it was still a spcial media site) and due to annoying shit like record label copyright probably wont be put on things like spotify and itunes. Porcelain still makes music, but it is more in the conventual pop vein than her original music unfortunately (it's still good but not even close to as good as her og music)