Chronamut - After Newgrounds

This starts up from where the previous blog left off. You can find that blog below:

Post-Ban Newgrounds

So we left off in that newgrounds had banned me from both the audio portal and the art portal, and the forums and had deleted a great deal of my music. Well, it's never been actually proven one way or another - but Tom either found the previous blog posts, or believed Syntrus's claims I was abusing him for my comments towards him (which were meant to be joking) or my attempts at cleaning up the audio portal were seen as an attempt to take over the site. Either way he claimed I put on a facade of being nice so I could be abusive to others, and he deleted me off the site entirely. All my accounts were removed systematically.

This set off a ripple effect on newgrounds of people being for and against it but most people just being shocked and surprised, and earned me the award that next year of most impactful thing of that year - "the purging of chronamut"

At this point I had amassed quite a few people from newgrounds both in discord and in what I had coined "newgrounds valhalla" on facebook, a final resting place for the greatest musicians on the site, and an easier way for us all to keep track of each other. Well needless to say this angered me to insane levels. I ended up going into a very dark place, exploding on a lot of people, and ultimately deleting the discord altogether, angering a lot of people who had used it for networking.

(please only request to join if you were a newgrounds musician between the years of 2003 and 2014)

Some people even made their OWN discord to complain about me, seems to be a common theme since people on skype also made a chat to complain about me, and they probably still do. I was a product of irc and the darker side of the web, so I tend to have a darker sense of humour and speak my mind, well it seems you can't do that anymore in our snowflake woke society.

The Death of Keith

So while I was reeling from all that was going on we still had our old irc room. I had just gone through a breakup and had just met someone new, Derek, whom I was just starting to get familiar with. He would eventually come to live with me, and still does to this day. At that point, my most favourite person in the world, Keith, or Keefer as he was known on irc, that I had known since he was 14, was still in my irc room. He was my everything, my soulmate. And he made life worth living. Derek and keith had some crossover but not too much.

Then one day Keith just stopped showing up in the room. A week went by and I had you could say a spiritual urging to look him up on google, and that's when I found his obituary. Keith had committed suicide and hung himself. My world, and my sanity just fell apart. I had no idea how to cope with something I had emotionally put all my eggs into so to speak. I tracked down the girl he lived with and we discussed everything together. Seems he had lived 2 lives- the life with him and an idealized life with me. This made me even sadder. She showed me his suicide note and it seems after the death of his father he felt like he had nothing left keeping him here.

I tried to show my pain on his facebook page but it seems the people who had been there for him in life felt like I wasn't as deserving of feeling his pain as they were and it got ugly. People can be so toxic. He had banned me from his facebook I guess to spare me from the people in his life, so those people had never even known I existed.

Everyone felt it. All our friends who knew him. He was a bright light that all of us had always felt and they knew the bond between us. This was the last straw for me. With what went on on newgrounds and now this the negrounds irc room which I had run for many many years just became sort of like a graveyard to me - a stain on my memory, and I abandoned it, leaving it to mr-dos, aka syneza to run if he wanted to.

The New Discord

Not one to be defeated totally, I decided it was time to stop doing things for other people, and to start doing things for myself. I thus made another discord room, originally calling it chronopolis. I took all the newgrounds people and irc people I could salvage and rerouted them back to that room. I ended up having a lot of issues with a user named Skymarshall whose lack of empathy made a lot of us not like him, esp around Keith's death. We would have a rocky on and off relationship which ultimately ended in him disengaging on his own and removing me from his room. Oh well. Sometimes you learn just because you know someone well, doesn't mean they are your friend.

I eventually would structure this room with different categories for different ways people had met me. I would never use discord to the same extent I did in the past though.

2019-2020

The next year I focused SPECIFICALLY on all my old music. I had spent the time between originally being banned form newgrounds and returning remastering a lot of my old music, well now that it was no longer there it was time to focus on getting it into albums and getting it onto spotify. It took a long time but I did. I took great pains to get them in as many good playlists as I could. I get some good royalties from them - nothing to live off mind you but nothing to sneeze at either :)

you can find the playlist for my songs here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6519rUPUW12sD8XcIt7iOy

(for some reason it won't embed)

I took my best songs and put them into albums - some songs I had a hard time finding licensing for because you have to pay for any vg cover you do, and that album has to have been released in the USA, and many of the songs I had done the albums were only released in japan, but I got my best songs on. Thankfully most of my songs - from 2003-2007 I had already made yearly collections for on youtube so their attempt at crushing me were only mildly effective.

(playlist collection of songs from 2003-2007)

I had also been using this time to further my online riddle and actually got quite far in it - I also created a discord for that as well just for the riddle and formulated a fun little community off of it. A little browser riddle based on old games like Zest online riddle and those - which I had started around 2002-2005 and tinkered with slowly over the years.

Game Link: https://www.chronriddles.com

(seems this will only allow you to embed so many files)

Chron Riddles Game Discord: https://discord.gg/CswUSk6cuQ

Starting The Journey Anew

So the end of 2020/beginning of 2021 rolls around, and one of my old friends links me to this new crypto social media site called Somee. I had never expressed any interest in crypto before, finding it too difficult to understand, but I tried, just because it was him and I had strong feelings for him all of my life. I eventually expressed those feelings to them and felt better after holding them in for so many years. He was understanding.

So it was kind of amusing the site, but then one day someone linked a crypto game on there - alien worlds, and me loving games I decided to try it out. You basically mined their "token" and the time you spent gave you x amt which you could then convert to a token called WAX, which could ultimately be converted into actual money.

Well one game led to another, on this "wax blockchain' metaverse, alien worlds led to koloboks which led to a game called rplanet, where you could "stake" cards from other games and earn their token, aether from it. This could also be convered to WAX. All of these cards were on 1 of 2 sites - simplemarket for FTs (fungible tokens - basically cards inside a game that could be traded) and Atomichub for NFTS - (non-fungible tokens - cards outside of a game that either had no value, just trading value, or had external stats that could be sorta appended to a game for added utility)

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Trying to explain tokenomics to people is super confusing so I will just leave it at that. I wanted more cards to stake though, but the 2 games I was slowly earning money through were far too primitive in their earnings and so I decided "hey, why not just become my OWN nft collection? I have music, I have art, I have my spirituality, I have my own riddle game, why not combine it all together into something cool??"

So I did. At that time it had been only 4 or so months since the atomichub site had been up, so there were very few collections on there - alien worlds cards mainly. So I grew, and grew, and grew. I had about 30 years worth of music and almost 20 years worth of music so I decided to branch it all into collections and called it "the chronaverse" - enter the chronaverse.

It was pretty cool - all collections everywhere, games etc were just starting up. I became friendly with the development team of alien worlds and rplanet on discord.

Eventually someone convinced me to join Telegram, and there I met more communities like Byrontheartist, a fellow artist who digned up not long after me, and places like DUST - where you can put a miner in your room and earn their dust tokens just by talking, and also games like galactic123, a fun little not for profit game where you can mine and earn tokens and explore.

I learned of a man named Kenn Bosak, sorta a pothead kind hearted man who just wanted to spread love through his "brobro" nfts - he had just been accepted for staking onto rplanet so he kinda just exploded. He was the first community I joined and I really enjoyed his community.. but as with everyone his fans slowly tarted to turn on him and people tried to stain his reputation. I will always love Kenn though, and be appreciative of his attempts to create a positive environment during the pandemic when we were all in such a dark mood..

But once again, chats, and egos, would spell trouble ahead..

Trouble on the Horizon

So it seems my troubles were to catch up to me. I decided to post a couple fan-made pieces of my work a couple people had made on newgrounds, not thinking much of it - I had credited the people and linked back to their stuff. Well a part of me still felt guilty about it and so I msged one of these people asking if it was ok - well he flipped out and posted on newgrounds that I was stealing his stuff, causing further damage to my reputation with people thinking I was now stealing other peoples work cuz I had run out of my own originality, which wasn't the case at all.

Him and I eventually straightened things out but he never corrected the post and thus I just had to.. live with it. I eventually found an alt they hadn't deleted on there and was able to at least message the people whose thoughts he had poisoned on there to clarify things, but eventually I would take down that piece entirely.

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But this was just the start of the issues. I learned while making my collection that I can be a bit of a dragon when it comes to people telling me what to do - and all these people had "opinions" but I had a very specific opinion of the direction I wanted my collection to take. I did not want to be beholden to anyone for my success, and wanted everything under my control.

So some people, in their zeal to get in on something kinda learned the hard way as I don't like to be pushed, and I developed a bit of a reputation. I also shilled my stuff, religiously, and was very confident in my work, and as always this started to annoy certain people in "power" and turned some people against me.

The First Attempt at Canceling

So there was a telegram group called Wax Street Bets that the person who had convinced me to join telegram ran, Mann his name was. Originally the group was fine and accepting but over time my obsession with promoting my own collection started to become problematic for many of them, who felt I was, as I always do, trying to take over, and gelt I was rather egotistical and that I wasn't chatting enough and contributing to the community.

What they didn't realize is when you start becoming part of a LOT of rooms, you can only invest a tiny portion of time in either. In addition the room was mostly about trading advice and tips, and I wasn't too too interested in that. Many of the rooms I was in I was invited to become part of their communities, and they would allow me to advertise as a bonus, and for many of them they sorta went back on their word becoming more annoyed by my promotion and slowly turning against me, not my problem just.. human nature I suppose.

So at that time my collection was pretty well established and I was pretty huge. Lots of people knew about me and I had collaborated with quite a few people. I had also JUST been verified on the site.

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There were 2 levels of "checkmark" sorta like twitter - regular whitelisting meant that atomichub could verify you were legit and was kinda the base verification, but the orange check mark, verification, was the big one as it meant you were SOMEBODY. So I had finally gotten that.

So I felt I could relax, and so I started to submit older stuff I had made, old sketches and stuff, well my userbase thought these were NEW and that I was getting lazy and my quality had rapidly gone down, so they complained to the staff about it. This combined with the fact in the past I had taken a hercules bust image from the british museum and restored it through photoshop to what it would have originally looked like in antiquity, with eyes, beard and shin colour etc, led atomichub to take my verification status away, and many of my buyers, fearing id be blacklisted - started to sell off my stuff and avoid my collection. This was my first blow.

The Second Attempt at Canceling

This put me back a ways, but it was more a minor inconvenience. The second attempt at canceling came due to the nature of what we discussed in the rooms.

As many people know there tends to be 2 trains of thoughts these day - those who are concerned with cultural takeovers and those that think anything out of woke mindsets is "whatever" ist - well I always encouraged freedom of thought in my rooms, and this was used against me. Someone made an awards page for best collection and I was in first place, and others started to get pissed off this, labeling me a racist because I had more open views about certain things than others, even going so far as to dig into my old twitter archives and bring up stuff out of context. Needless to say they didn't succeed but it was bothersome nonetheless - I ended up torpedoing one of my telegram connections because I wouldn't back down and they all got super toxic. I don't give in to bullies,. I am allowed to have my own views.

The Third Attempt - the BIG one

So one day I was going about my business.. I had FINALLY gotten my collection staked on atomichub, and I was at the top of the list. I had met someone named the blue wizard, who is a millionaire irl, and his addition to my collection skyrocketed me to the top - I was living high, but as we all know this is the time when catastrophe happens.

So I get a message on telegram from someone who is interested in using my music in their upcoming game - I was one of the few people who had music in his nfts - the most valuable being stakeable on rplanet - one of the biggest games on the chain at that time. Their english was impeccable, which threw my regular scam detection off.. they didn't use sir, and they were interested in something that most people shouldn't just know offhand. Their username was WSB which I woulsn't understand the significance of the letters until later- Wax Street Bets. They either intentionally or not had basically sent an assassin after me.

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So this person sent me a digital contract to sign - usually I would track down the people from the actual game and verify, but it seems in my moment of weakness, and because I had never had issues with digital contracts before I opened it - well this installed a keylogger onto my computer and that's when the hell began. I wrote a post about the full extend of that so I will just link it here:

https://thechronaverse.medium.com/the-chronaverse-has-been-compromised-b166a3202cd1

No need to rehash it but needless to say I pretty much lost everything I had built - they took over the entire collection and I had to rebuild everything from scratch - all the assets I had collected from other games was pretty much gone - other people were kind enough to return some stuff and help me get on my feet, but it was the biggest takedown of the collection in atomichubs history, and possibly wax blockchains history.

Turning a Weakness into a Strength

I won't lie, this event took a LOT of the wind out of my sails and sent me on a slow spiral. I had for a while been talking to someone online named John, another soulmate, an even stronger one than keith, but we were like twin flames in that we tested each other a lot. Well he had his own cancer scare trials and I had this to go through, and I regret that in similar fashion I took a lot of it out on him. My dad also passed away from a sudden heart attack a couple months after the incident and it was just too much for me to take. I regret than when faced with trauma I tend to react in anger. It was not a good time for anyone. John is still with me though, and we have grown in many ways as has our love for each other, so thank you John, for not giving up on me.

I DID consider giving up, and many people would not have blamed me if I had, stating they don't think they would have been able to recover from it themselves. But ultimately I am not one to give up, so I used the spite to galvanize me, and start to rebuild.

I decided to use the time to up my game. I had almost released all my old stuff by the time the hack happened so now was the time to explore new avenues. I learned programs like zbrush to create 3d models, since I had always been good at sculpting, and furthered my skills I havd always had in photohop and so I decided to further the lore of the chronaverse. I was slowly recreating the collection and airdropping nfts to the previous holders of the old stuff - but I knew this would probably take a couple of years as over 60,000 nfts were now in circulation. The new nfts acted as a cover to show I was still making work while I rebuilt in the background. To protect me the site blacklisted my old collection and whitelisted my new collection.

Unfortunately some people burned my old stuff at this time considering it a lost cause. I lost about 75% of my fanbase at this time as many simply thought I'd never recover.. but recover I did, and I came back with even better quality art.

Not long after this AI started to take over the scene, and then I had a new problem on my hands..

The Scourge of AI

So now everyone suddenly could become an artist and I was presented with a unique situation - if my art was bad it would be accused of being AI, if it was too good it would be accused of being AI. I had a couple benefits in my back pocket though. I already was an artist, and had been for decades. I had proven I could carve, with my jack o lanterns, that I could sculpt, with my giant crystal shells I had made, and I had shown I knew how to do composition and design with all the art I had made over the years.

I made sure to make a couple examples of my work in zbrush so they could compare it to the work I had currently done.. but it still wasn't enough for some people, and I had to just learn to live with it. I could post my examples but if they still went after me there wasn't much I could do. I refused to get to the point where I had to make videos detailing everything I did, as I did this for fun. I had regained a lot of my userbase and gotten some new fans of my work, and I wasn't going to let this get me down.

R-Planet Drama

So running parallel to this I had finally achieved my dream. Rplanet for years had used the contributions of their userbase to fund the final evolution of their game - a battle royale where people were pitted against each other on alliance teams to see who could last until the end, and those people would get prizes. Well I had risen to the top of rplanet as one of the most influential people there was, and, combined with the blue wizard we made a colossal team.

Well it started out ok - but then through bowling and overworking I developed tendonitis in both wrists, and couldn't be functional for over a month. This meant I couldn't interact in the game much and could only offer advice - I made it to almost the end but due to some past standing grudges they came for me in the end and eliminated me. Blue still gave me an award off market though as thanks.

Thus when the next round came around I wanted no part of it because I felt I couldn't be the best I could be, but blue begged and even offered my protection through shield nfts I could use daily, so I begrudgingly agreed.. but this proved to be very damaging towards me. Egos clashed with many members, with some going all out and antagonizing others and others holding back and hiding. I tried to keep control and keep diplomacy between other alliances but it got really hard to tell who was being truthful or treacherous and to keep proper communication avenues going.

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This was around the time I was trying to process the bad health of my partner and so I decided to delegate my leadership duties to three other people, but then more fighting occurred, fingers were pointed, and it ended with many people simply ragequitting or not being able to get along. I had fingers pointed at me that I wasn't doing my fair share, and I angrily responded back I did more than they ever knew, and that I was going through my fair share, and that I didn't want to play this round ANYWAYS and that I delegated the duties to them for a reason. We were able to limp our way across the finish line with most o hte members intact, with me being the final person to limp over, so I barely won, but I won nohetheless.

But I decided this round to just not play at all. Too much damage had been done, to the alliance, my collection and there was just bad energy all around. I may play again if they have adventure more or single player mode but to play a game for months 24/7 without rest is jut not good for the soul, or the body. So I proved what I went there for, and now was a good time to pull out.

50% mark

Recently I had gotten to the 50% mark of restoration of my collection, which meant there were certain things I could bring back online. I could bring telegram games back online and award prizes to people, I could get blends and packs online which allowed people to open packs to get blend pieces, and then combine those blends into 1 of a kind pieces or full resolution pieces of my art, which was a huge factor of my collection back in the day. That felt really good.

Recently I decided to also make a reddit page for the chronaverse, and also put my collection back on opensea, which is a different blockchain on the ETH network, and while my own reddit room appears to be doing fine for now, posting my stuff elsewhere, esp. in the art reddit I had posted for years, started to get me the sinister accusation of AI comments again, which I have just had to start to live with.

Currently I am exploring all sorts of art avenues - mythological birds being my big thing atm - I try to veer away from the mundane and try to do something that evokes wonder and realism. So I am currently just trying to enjoy myself - you can join my reddit page here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheChronaverse/

Starting over in Love

So recently my partner of over 10 years fell very ill - he was bedridden and the doctors didn't know what was wrong with him. The pandemic meant we had not been able to see each other for quite some time, and now with deteriorating health I didn't know what to do. So I posted about it on my facebook. Well my family did not take kindly to that because they thought I had broken up with him years ago, simply because I never talked about him to them anymore, and accused me of not communicating with them, and posting it online instead of telling them. I responded in my anger that they never approved of it anyways so I just stopped telling them things. And this caused lots of anger that had been suppressed to come forth but thankfully be transmuted and be out in the open, so like many things I went through it was a blessing in disguise and helped to get things out in the open.

It also unfortunately further drove home that I had a decision to make. I had already told him when we reached our 10 year mark that we would have to have a conversation about the future of our relationship, so.. seeing there did not seem to be a path forward that I had tried to reel in this fish for too long. He lived in new york, and I ontario, and the goal had always been for him to come up here to live, but it just wasn't materializing.. and so, in the kindest way I could, I ended it. He was very sad but he also understood the circumstances and so we decided to end it as friends.

The past few weeks were very hard with my emotions being all over the place and fear of never meeting anyone in todays changed dating climate. But I decided to not to try to rush back into a relationship, and just enjoy and build connections with people and see where things went. I still live with my roommate Derek so I am not in a rush to rush into anything. And that is where I currently stand. Still rebuilding my collection, my friendships, and myself.

If you wish to chat with me feel free to join my rooms:

telegram: https://t.me/enterthechronaverse

and discord: https://discord.gg/djMtGJCY7E

you can also check out my art both as nfts: https://www.chronriddles.com/thechronaverse

as well as to buy for framing etc: https://shawndall.com

Conclusion

And that's about it! You can hurt me, you can damage me, but I will always bounce back stronger and more experienced than before :)

I have some good people in my life and I am grateful for them. I am trying to learn to be more patient, to speak my opinions less, and to be kinder to people instead of just needing to be right all the time - slowly filing down my sharp edges I have formed from being exposed to this life, and learning to trust again. I spent the past 4 years straightening my teeth so I feel I have a lot more self esteem back so I just have to work on repairing the rest.

Thanks to all who have stuck with me all this time! Much love to you all and here's hope to a future with less trauma and more happiness and growth! I have learned that everyone deserves happiness, and friends, respect, and love.

-shawn-