Starr is Screaming

I used to be a huge fan of Lily Orchard, because she was very cathartic to watch back when I had Conservatives on the brain much more frequently, and was thus intensely angry about them all day, and I wasn't confident in myself or my choices. Even years later, I continue to be drawn to really aggressive people in order to cope with how small and ineffective I feel sometimes.

I stopped watching her because I found out about Britt's allegations against her, which I only ended up finding because my best friend was deeply uncomfortable with the way Lily treated people, and I wanted to do more research. So I just wanted to take some distance for a bit, at least. Obviously forever if it turned out the allegations were true.

During that distance, I became a huge fan of Vaush, and one day I found a video of him covering Lily Orchard's video on Contrapoints, a YouTuber I was also a big fan of, and still am. I was shocked to find out that Lily had done a hit piece against Contra tbh, because that just wasn't in the usual "This MLP episode / show is garbage" territory I had grown used to before taking my distance.

Lo and behold, the video was HOT garbage, like just packed to the brim with outright lies, mischaracterization, and vitriol. And I was just... disgusted. That was what put me on the path to not only being wary of continuing to follow her, but outright disliking her. I went back and rewatched a few of her old videos and suddenly I was recognizing the same nasty tactics in those, where she was basically slandering people she didn't like or had some kind of beef with.

I also recall being really uncomfortable with her takes on taboo fiction, big surprise, even back when I was a fan. Because I've always felt the way I do about it, I've simply put more thought into it by now than I did as a teenager.

I also found her Twitter "writing tips" list to be laughably awful, and I thoroughly enjoyed the Two Professional Writers' takedown of it (especially already being a fan of Gus).

Now I'm still shocked while watching some other videos covering Lily, because I never expected her to go this deep into just... I'm not exaggerating, completely making up entire things about people that, if anything, have tons of evidence against, like she doesn't even do a whole lot of the clipping thing that most people do to streamers they hate (though she also does that), most of her take-down is flat-out made up lies based on literally nothing of relevance.

Here I was, terrified that someone would use my Aethy or old politically confused posts of mine in order to slander me, but Lily doesn't even try to properly ruin people, she just makes up shitty fan fiction about them and then touts it as the truth. Hearing her call Vaush a white supremacist and say he's not politically motivated was so bonkers.

I say all this mostly cause I just sorta felt like it? But also because, in a way, it's actually kind of liberating to know that NO MATTER WHAT I do to keep myself from being taken wrong, people will do it anyway, even if I give them no reason to. Even if I say absolutely nothing confusing. And that's somewhat comforting to me because it makes me want to go ahead and finally stop worrying SO much about what people say about me.

People are going to lie and throw shit and foam at the mouth no matter what, and tbh I'm still a sensitive motherfucker, but idk maybe one day I'll finally make that video I had considered making about how I used to idolize Lily, which I was TERRIFIED to make because I didn't want her sending harassment my way for the crime of mentioning her name.

Though tbh... I'm not sure I have much else to say about her than this, and I'm content keeping this as an extended showerthoughts-esque post on Aethy or Dreamwidth lol.

Iunno, I'm cool with just moving on from her! But figured I'd say all this, and if anyone else has experiences with her or her content, I'm always open to chat about it. :3