Getting some things off my chest (cw: pedophilia, grooming, abuse, slur)


Hi, I'm Nepeta. You might know me by one of my many smash tags, Dirk Strider, Amewlia Queerheart or Kumatora. First, before I get into the really shitty stuff, I wanna give some background, and lay a couple things out. For the sake of the privacy of the people mentioned, I won't be naming anyone - instead I will be using letters to represent them. Additionally, in the case of my abusers that I will be mentioning - although I don't want them to ever hurt anyone ever again, I don't even know their current aliases for the most part their names, whatever, and I really don't want to find out. More than anything, though, I don't want this to appear as me shifting the blame or trying to redirect. I take full responsibility for my actions. Finally, I wanna apologize for my fuzzy recollections of the past. I've had pretty terrible memory for years now that's only worsened severely since my chronic pain started in March. Additionally.. I think I've tried to lock all these memories away, in fact I think I did for a while - I don't talk about this stuff much because I don't like to remember it, and remembering it at all is very difficult for me. I would really appreciate if you took the time out of your day to read all of this, but if you would rather not, I will be including a short and to the point tldr at the end.


I don't remember when I first signed up, but when I was 14, I was very active on Tumblr. I was still working on discovering myself, currently identifying as a straight boy, and was into some very problematic stuff, including "traps". This lead me to follow a bunch of different trans women, including one I'll be referring to as J. I looked up to J a /lot/. Like, a lot a lot. I also found J incredibly attractive and honestly, had a huge crush on her. She was 26. One day, she followed my blog back. Of course, this was soo exciting for me! I don't remember if it was the same day, or a while after, but I remember at some poined I gathered the courage to send her an ask (Tumblr didn't have messaging at this point) asking for her Steam and if she'd like to play some games together sometime. We didn't talk a ton except for one time when we played Civilization together and we voice called. That voice call I asked her a lot of things about being trans, which I realize now was probably very overwhelming for her. But I think talking to her about all that stuff is what made me realize that I'm a woman myself. A different day, she messaged me while horny. I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but I know she wanted to sext with me. I was reluctant, I remember saying that I'd like to but it makes me a little uncomfortable because I've never RP'ed before and didn't really know how. She told me that was fine, she didn't mind if I was weird or awkward or anything. So we sexted. I remember thinking that it meant she loved me. It made me really really happy. Until the next day, when she wouldn't respond to my message. She kept me as a friend on Steam, and stayed my mutual on Tumblr, but she never responded to my messages. I was so confused, angry, I didn't know what was going on and I didn't know what to do about it. I told some friends about it but I never included her age. Every once in a while I would check her Tumblr to see how she was doing. I still have it memorized, and its still there, she appears to be fine, but the scariest part is she's lying about her age. Her bio says she's 24 years old, which is just a year older than me. I know that's not true.


In January of 2015 I was 18 years old, turning 19 in April. I don't remember why she had added me, although I think it was perhaps because we were in a group together for women and other gender minorities in Smash. I got a message from her, at the time a top level Melee player (Top 100 skill level, but not actually Top 100) on Facebook who was 28 at the time, awkwardly introducing herself. I'll be referring to her as V. I had just started taking Smash more seriously that year, after starting to enter tournaments in December 2013. So I looked up to her a lot - I couldn't believe I was talking to, flirting with, even, someone that had taken games and sets off of huge names, even top 10 players! I didn't really realize it at the time, but even from her first messages she was very affectionate and always trying to appear cutesy. For a long time I've thought of her as my groomer - I know, I wasn't a minor at the time, but it still feels like she was absolutely grooming me with the intention of getting me to talk about and do sexual things with her. I also notice, looking back at our messages now, she would very often lash out at me and then be extremely down on herself, often, or more accurately, always making me feel like I was the one at fault for whatever she had done. A lot of the details are fuzzy, but we stayed friends until late 2017, as time went on we drifted apart and started talking/flirting less and less. At that point I could no longer tolerate the fact that she was a loli/shotacon, and when I brought this up to her she broke down, and very passive aggressively, almost proudly, admitted to being a pedophile. I think that moment is when my eyes were opened - before then I hadn't really thought about our age gap much if at all. If anything, it just made things hotter for me. But I hadn't realized she was just using me the entire time - I think that conversation just brought a lot of old feelings back. So I blocked her, and we haven't talked since, nor have I checked on her to see if she's okay. It's not my concern, and why should it be, if I was never a concern to her?

Anyways - I'm sure you're all wondering, what the fuck did I do? Why am I writing all of this? Well, all the victims in the Smash community coming out about their experiences recently really hit home with me. I've considered coming out about my experiences a lot, especially with V - its so scary to think that she might still be hurting people. But like I said, I don't want to redirect. If I decide I'm comfortable telling people who they are, then I will, but not here, not now. It might be a really silly reason to 'come clean' but recently I finished watching Season 6 of Bojack Horseman and with it, the entirety of the show. There was something that Diane said in Episode 11 that really hit me, to the point it caused me to break down sobbing immediately - "I think you should do the hard thing and be honest. About everything. Things will get worse before they get better, but you won't spend the rest of your life waiting for the other shoe to drop." So, the reason I'm posting this, why I'm writing all of this, is because from January 2018 to March 2018 I was in a long distance relationship with a minor. At the time, he was 16 years old, while I was 21. I will be referring to him as E. We met in Fall of 2017, through Smash, in which he's a top level player. We slowly became really good friends over the course of the next few months, and I really looked up to him - I still do, honestly. I've always had a really bad flaw of falling for anyone who is really nice to me, and generally with the people I spend the most time with. And so, I guess thats what happened. I think more than anything, I was in love with the things he said and the time he spent with me, rather than him himself, even if there were a lot of times he yelled at me or made me cry, I really can't blame him for it at all - he was a 16 year old in a relationship with a 21 year old. And, it wasn't extremely common but there were absolutely quite a few times we talked sexually, a couple times where I sent an explicit photo of myself. He never sent any back though, for my safety, and I think he knew that I didn't really want them, just validation. After we broke up (mutually - we both realized it wasn't going to work and that, more importantly, it wasn't okay.) I blocked him for a long time. I tried to forget about it. But I couldn't. Eventually I unblocked him, and we're still friends to this day - we've talked about the relationship and apologized to each other for how we treated each other, how the whole thing went. But I can't help feeling guilty, because I know what I did was wrong, and awful, even more so to not have admitted to it until now. I think what I feel the worst about more than anything, is that I continued the chain. Age gaps were so normalized to me that at first I didn't see the problem, or at least as much of a problem as it was. I've been so scared of everyone's responses but I'm tired of keeping it in. Additionally, having looked at my messages with V again, I'm realizing I picked up a lot of awful things from her, and so I also want to apologize to any of my past partners I may have hurt because of that. I'm so, so sorry for disappointing everyone, I'm trying to get better and be better. As I write this I'm preparing to go to Pride, a 28-day program in Minneapolis that deals with both mental health and substance abuse issues, which if you follow me on Twitter or know me at all, you'll know that I struggle a lot with those two things. I know that feeling bad about it doesn't make it okay, and again, I take full responsibility for my actions. If people want me banned from competing in Smash for life, then so be it. I got myself here. I just couldn't keep it in any longer, even if E claims I didn't hurt him at all, its hard to believe. People need to know this, and if they want to leave me for it, again, so be it. I'm going to do my best to be a better person though and rid myself of all of my toxic behaviors. Thank you so much for reading this.

tldr; I was sexualized and groomed by two different trans women as a teenager, one when I was 14 (while she was 26) and one when I was 18 (while she was 28) and I ended up having a two month long, long distance relationship with a 16 year old while I was 21 in 2018. We both realized it was wrong and not okay and agreed it needed to end. We're still friends to this day but having this on my back is too much, and I needed to come clean. I don't think I'm a pedophile, but I can't make that judgement for you. I take full responsibility for my actions, and I'm so sorry.

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