DragonMage98

Well, I've decided to make my Discord public. Please be at least 18 years old.

Here's the link: https://discord.gg/avbxBzhWPw

If anything doesn't work correctly, feel free to let me know

As the title of this journal suggests, yes, I've decided to put all of my tf art in storage. This includes some non-tf pics I wasn't satisfied with having up anymore.

Why did I do this? They just remind me of the bad experiences I had with the tf community. It felt like I wasted several years of my life being involved with a community when I could've been doing more productive stuff in my personal life. So why should I keep having those up anymore?

Will I ever reupload them? Probably never.

Yeah, I know this is sudden. I hope people understand where I'm coming from and respect my decision.

Since Bluesky is open to the public now, might as well give this Twitter alternative a shot.

Here's my Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dragonmage98.bsky.social

Not sure how active I'll be on there, yet. I'll be posting some of my stuff on there, too. Don't worry, I'm not leaving DA and migrating to Bluesky.

Over the past few months, I've been thinking if some of my friends are actually my friends. This doesn't really apply to my irl friends. More so the friends I've made online.

The glaring issue I've constantly faced for years was that I was always the one starting the conversation. This was regardless of how well I got along with them. I swear, 99% of the time I'm always the one starting the conversation. I'm not exaggerating that number either. Very seldom do people reach out to me, including my friends. Admittedly, I've grown very uncomfortable at the fact that I've always been the one who initiated, so much so that I feel like I'm acting like a creepy weirdo. It's not reciprocal.

And I know exactly what you're going to say: it doesn't matter who starts first. Well, in this situation, yeah, does matter who starts first! If I'm always the one who starts first and they don't even put in the effort to start a conversation, it's just a one sided relationship! I'm not asking for attention, I just want my friends to at least make some kind of fucking effort.

I've talked to one of my friends about this recently, even telling them that I've even considered cutting contact with them. It definitely wasn't easy to say that. I cried later that day.

Now I'm at the point where I'm starting to cut contact from people that've ghosted me or never initiate any conversations. I'm not gaining nor losing anything from that. I don't give a shit if doing that makes me unhappy, I never was happy to begin with. Even if I tried finding better friends, they all end up doing the same exact shit! I'm just tired and frustrated with having to deal with this on a regular basis. Why should I bother pursuing and maintaining relationships anymore if I'm always the one starting conversations? If you're not willing to reciprocate and put in the effort, I'm just cutting contact from you. Nothing of value was lost.

UPDATE: As of November 16th, 2023, I’ve left the new stretch zone server. Please read the bottom of this journal for more info.

Just as I thought I could finally get away from the tf community, someone hijacked a tf server I was an owner of and started trashing it. Now, I'm helping rebuild it. So, what the hell happened? Well, the TL;DR is that I was looking for someone to become a new owner of the server. Unfortunately, the person who I picked to become the new owner backstabbed me and started abusing their power and trashing the place. Luckily, Legendarycartoon made a new server and now we're currently in the middle of getting people back from the old server and rebuilding what was taken from us.

There's a bit more to this, so if you're curious, keep reading.

A brief history of the Stretch Zone:

Sometime in early 2018, it started with me and elasticityfan talking about Discord servers and making one specifically for elastic stuff. She made the server, called it Elastikogynephilia, then invited me and morelocomicon shortly after. I guess you could say the three of us were the original founding members. Over time, we'd invite our friends and people we knew from the community every now and then. It wasn't a big server at the time.

In 2019, things started falling apart. elasticityfan was allowing minors into the server, there wasn't even a moderation team for the longest time. I got banned from the server after freaking out when someone, who I didn't get along with in the community, joined the server. I also had a long, heated argument with elasticityfan in dms. It was very ugly and we haven't spoken to each other ever since.

In late 2019, once people started realizing the Elastikogynephilia server was falling apart, someone by the name of Puffles made a new Elastikogynephilia server as a means to start fresh. I joined the new one, along with some people who were a part of the old one. This new server would finally have a proper moderation team and most importantly, making it 18+. I would offer to become a mod of the new server, since I was one of the founding members of the old one. I was able to become a mod and did it for a long time.

Since then, the old Elastikogynephilia server that elasticityfan made was eventually deleted. The new Elastikogynephilia that Puffles made continued to grow and improve over the years. Around the time the Bodyworks server (one of the most popular, if not the go to server for the tf community) announced they'll be shutting down the server, an influx of members from that server migrated to Elastikogynephilia. After some time, Puffles would step down as owner and entrusted ownership to Dezzy. Not surprisingly, the server continued to grow and improve as time went on. Yet again, after some time, the name of the server would change to The Stretch Zone, then Dezzy stepped down as owner and entrusted the server to me, since I was one of the few active staff on there at the time.

Once I became owner of the server, I did my best to help improve the server as much as I could. Like, implementing Disboard so it was easier for people to find the server, adding and updating some channels, and I believe adding react roles via Dyno bot. So far, everything was looking pretty good. As one of the original founding members, I was happy to see the server finally flourish after all these years.

Passing ownership and the incident that transpired:

In August 2023, I met an individual on another server, Fleshcrafing Heaven. Let's call this individual Mr. M. He added me as a friend on Discord, seemed friendly and didn't give any weird vibes. He was looking for some tf servers to join, so I sent him an invite link to the Stretch Zone, since I was currently the owner at the time. Admittedly, we didn't talk much.

In late September 2023, I announced that I'd be eventually stepping down as owner of the Stretch Zone server. I wanted to distance myself from the tf community. For awhile, nobody reached out to me inquiring about passing ownership to them. So, in early November 2023, I made another announcement, this time looking for people with prior experience with being a mod or/and admin for any servers. Quite a handful of people reached out to me shortly after, and one of them was Mr. M. After giving some thought who I should appoint to as mods and admins, I was left with a choice between making either Mr. M, or Legendarycartoon as the new owner. Both of them sounded like they were the most qualified. I chose Mr. M because I knew Legendarycartoon owned a couple of other servers; I guess I didn't want to burden them.

November 13th, 2023, I made an announcement letting people know who's the new owner and the new admins and mods for the server. So far so good, right? My plan wasn't to step down the exact same day I made that announcement. One of the mods asked if I gave ownership to Mr. M yet, which I hadn't yet. I eventually did. About half an hour into Mr. M's ownership, half a dozen people joined the server, who were apparently friends of his. These "friends" of his would gradually start causing some chaos in the server. Ranging from, but not limited to, claiming to be underage, pinging random people, pinging everyone, occasionally saying the n word, etc. Me and one of the admins were able to ban them, but for some reason, they came back. Not with a different account, the same account that was just banned. I took a look in the server's audit log and realized Mr. M unbanned these people. I asked him why he was doing that, but didn't get an immediate response. Shortly after, I had realized my owner, admin, and moderator roles were stripped of me. He took those roles off of me before I could manually remove them myself! Meanwhile, his "friends" started posting images of nazi flags, or flags resembling them, then Mr. M changes the name of the server and the server's icon to reflect nazi imagery. I was shocked and horrified about what the fuck just happened. I confronted Mr. M in dms asking why he was doing this to me. He wasn't giving me a straight answer at first. At first, this little shit had the nerve to send me gifs of Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars Episode 3. (I swear to god, I'm not making this up.) So I asked him again, this time he finally gave me an answer. He admitted that he tricked me and even said he wasn't even into tfs in the first place. Shortly after, I was kicked from the server. A bunch of other members were kicked and banned by Mr. M and his "friends."

During that fiasco, Legendarycartoon made a new Stretch Zone server, then shared an invite link to it. I passed the invite link along to as many people as I could. Meanwhile, I apologized to everyone about what happened and not knowing that was going to happen.

Yeah, it was quite devastating and a real shock to all of us. I'm still trying to process what the fuck just happened. I'll admit, I do feel responsible, since I was the one that decided to give ownership to Mr. M. Had I given ownership to someone else, I don't think any of this would've happened. I just know this shit is gonna haunt me for the rest of my days. It feels like no matter what I do in the tf community, I can't fucking do anything right. This is just another reason why I want to distance myself from that community. Now, I'm dragged back into a community I don't want any involvement with. I have to help the community rebuild that server, it's the least I can do. Once the new server is rebuilt and stable, I'll finally take my leave, and never come back to the tf community.

But yeah, that was probably the most evil thing someone has ever done to me on Discord. I hope that little shit gets banned after playing a sick joke like that.

Sorry if this was a bit of a lengthy read, I wanted to get this off my chest and hopefully clarify a few things regarding this

UPDATE: As of November 16th, 2023, I’ve decided to leave the stretch zone server for good this time. I do not have the energy nor motivation to help rebuild the new server. I’ll provide a link to the new server as a pinned comment. If for whatever reason the invite link inevitably expires, please ask Legendarycartoon for an invite since they made the new server, not me.

UPDATE 2: After giving some thought, probably the most I'll be doing within that community would be lurking or commissioning stuff. The latter of which would be a once in a blue moon thing. But yeah, don't expect me to active with stretchy stuff.

For those who may or may not be aware, there’s a new scam going around over the past little while. This involves someone pretending to be working with Kabam Games, an actual video game company, using the company’s logo as their avatar, giving you a watch and sending you a note with the following message:

Dear, (Username)! Our team was quite taken with the quality of your artwork. Kаbam Games invite you to a new game development.Open positions:Junior/Middle/Senior 2D Artist;Junior/Middle/Senior 3D Artist;Senior/Middle Concept Artist;Art Director;Lead Artist;Senior/Middle UI Artist. Please review the file showcasing examples of our company's projects. This will give us insight into your qualifications and compatibility with our company's work. Download: (Link) Reply here for to apply. Regards, (Random name here)

If this is ever sent to you, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK! Doing so will prompt you to download a .rar file. There’s a good chance it’ll contain viruses and malware.

I wouldn’t worry too much about replying to them. I did send a reply back as to why they sent me a link to a .rar file, but got nothing back.

Feel free to spread awareness to this and hopefully nobody will be affected by it.