Ever since I've come into the world, I've been horrible at making friends, but very, very good at making enemies. Every time I enter a new community or social 'scene', especially online, I end up meeting someone who doesn't like me and whom I don't like. At least at first: I'd be lying if I didn't say that I eventually became somewhat friendlier with some of them, to the point that especially here on Newgrounds, the people I once considered my worst enemies proved to eventually be closer to me than a lot of my original friends. But before I could put the period of mutual distaste behind me, I had to step up.

Enemies, by their very nature, demand much more out of you than friends. Friends just ask that you're not too much of a dick to them, or that you have some interests in common with them, or mutual support and assistance depending on the situation. But enemies keep you on your toes. Enemies never let you let your guard down, lest they completely crush you. You must always be alert, and at the top of your game, if you hope to defeat a dangerous enemy. And as you keep striving your best against them, your best just gets better. As does theirs if they're taking it seriously, of course, but that just means you'll get even better. Case in point, my long-forgotten disagreements in my early Newgrounds days with the Kitty Krew and spammers in general, as represented against me mainly by LordZeebmork. I said and did things in November and December 2007 that, by February and March 2008, I'd progressed well away from being dumb enough to do, all because when I'd said and done those things before, such as comparing Internet trolls to Nazis, those on the other side made a point of revealing to me exactly how far out of proportion I was taking things. I like to think I ended up smarter about things than I went in... But if I did, it wasn't because of my friends.

I'll give you another example, this one not about me personally but about a Pokémon roleplaying chat in which I spend a lot of my time and from which come most of my excuses about not being on Newgrounds much anymore. My character at the time was Mewtwo. You know, clone of Mew, blew up the scientists who created him, was duped by Giovanni, blew up Giovanni's headquarters, planned to destroy the world but later turned into a good guy. There's some other stuff tacked on for the chat involving Mewtwo helping to protect the multiverse from evil, but that's largely superfluous for these purposes. The point is, my Mewtwo is a good guy despite minor anger management problems. His attempts to break the level of monotony that had settled into his life eventually led him to a subdimension centered around a fetish club, where he met the club founder and subdimensional founder, whom we'll call MA. Now, MA had a surprisingly familiar backstory: a genetically enhanced clone who killed his creators, joined Team Rocket, and later betrayed the Rockets. So you'd think he and Mewtwo would get along, right? Not so much. For you see, MA was evil. Not just 'general douchebag' evil, not 'conquer the multiverse' evil, MA was a flat-out Complete Monster if the multiverse had ever known one, if a bit on the Faux Affably Evil side. You wanna know how bad MA was? The story had a Vocaloid-related side-plot based around the Vocaloids being artificial humans marketed as domestic assistants and such. A generally decent, law-abiding man had two Vocaloid assistants: one Len Kagamine unit, and one Kaito unit. Then MA came along. He killed the man, turned the man's mansion into the fetish club subdimension, and began to physically and sexually assault the Vocaloids, ultimately resulting in both units ceasing to function... Only AFTER the Kaito unit had lost both arms. But MA's cruelty didn't end there. He ordered his then-mad scientist to repair, reactivate, and reprogram the Len unit as a rapebot. Consider it like this: being stuck inside your own mind, forced to watch your body do horrible things to people but unable to stop yourself or voice any protest. Luckily the Len unit got out to our hero Mewtwo, holding the deactivated and dismembered Kaito unit, and was rescued. Of course, Mewtwo isn't going to take this lightly, especially not after the Nimbasa Incident (go ahead sucker, ask me what that is) so he and MA became bitter enemies. Then something wonderful happened: the already nigh-godlike Mewtwo became even greater than he was, and set his life back on the proper track, and even eventually met the (humanoid, but let's not judge here) woman that he wanted to marry, all because he rose to fight MA.

More recently in the RP chat, I've developed a sort of OOC archnemesis... An individual who is intent on being everything I'm not, and using his status as such to constantly ruin my nights in the chatroom, prevent plot resolution, and get away with it. Make no mistake, I do not get along with this person. But the funny thing about that is, he's the only one who can make me write a wall of text. Some people are dedicated enough to write such long, detailed descriptions about their characters' actions or appearances, but I can only ever seem to muster that kind of emotion when pointing out how a certain individual bothers me. Perhaps I'm just more cut out to fanboy bitching and following complex, convoluted chains of continuity than to the roleplaying aspect of the chat... Or perhaps my current foe is simply pushing me upwards to greater levels of dedication and ability.

Many people focus on the importance of making friends, and believe me, I'd rather like some more of those. And don't mistake me for a hatemonger, since a lot of this applies as much to friendlier rivalries as to more bitter situations of dislike and opposition. But as with everything else, there's a balance, and fuck it I haven't done a news post in over a year so y'all got this.