(The title is taken from my favorite Rankin/Bass special, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.)
February 18, 2005, I was uploading the last of my newest website Moon Sisters to my old AOL Hometown account. But I had a small issue. What will be my pen name?
Back then, if you ran a Sailormoon page, the trend was that you would make up a picture of yourself, post it to the front or about pages, and have a nickname. It was also a trend to make up your own Sailor Senshi and back story. It's simple, harmless goofing off that really doesn't mean anything.
For years, I had the pen name "Sailor Earth" but there are over 104,224 other Sailor Earths in the world, and I was sick of the hate mail from this one 600 lbs. male, who complained that his skirt was prettier than mine. (It was the same. But with glitter. He's in prison now.)
Well I had already made this .gif image, and I didn't feel up to making a new one. So I thought, what can I do for a pen name, at least temporarily?
While uploading the site, I did a Google search so I could find more links for the link page. And that's when it hit me.
Sailormoon is actually a spin-off from the series Codename Sailor V, a series that follows Sailor Venus one year before she meets the rest of the cast. At the time, the books were not in English, but I told myself every day that one day, I'd read the whole series. (I now have multiple copies.) I just couldn't get over how cool she looks with those glasses.
And that's when it hit me. Codename!! I'll just add that to my pen-name. Nobody else in the whole world has it, so now it's mine.
I had a year of hate emails and people trying to rip from my page, but after that quelled, I had peace. I even befriended other "Sailor Earths" online, and for a while, some of us would joke in the role play forums that we were like the Green Lanterns of Sailor Senshi. Harmless fun.
But then in 2008, I noticed that YouTube was hyper taking down every third video I posted. At first I thought "Copyright BS" until I noticed that the names didn't add up. There were people posing as Warner employees, trying to take videos that have NO Warner Brothers content in them, at all!
Then in 2011, I was hyper trolled. I had all kinds of total strangers stalking me, harassing me, going after my family, posting hate about me, hacking me, every day was a nightmare, and I really didn't want to keep living. What the hell was going on?
But there's no better way to piss people off than to keep living and posting. So I did.
I also started a few other YouTube channels under different titles.
... And then something weird happened.
But the other channels *knock on wood* seem to be doing alright. Even the channel for my Sailormoon page is getting warm, positive comments. The channel with my actual name on it hardly gets any attention, but when it does, it's positive.
Everyone knows it's me on all of them, I don't hide that I own them, but only my Codename Sailor Earth channels have these wackos piling out from the woodwork. The rest are doing alright.
Every YouTube channel I've had under the "Codename Sailor Earth" moniker has had problems with trolling and people trying to put fake claims on MY videos.
NONE of these freaks are Sailormoon fans, mind you. Most aren't even anime fans anymore. Not once do I see more than two Sailormoon fans going ape shit over it.
They're all ages 18-35, and feel the need to harass me and go nuts. Most of them aren't even into the things I like/post about. But they're quick to tell me all the ways they want to "expose" me and how they would want me to die. Not one of them are kids these days, it's split 60/40 men vs. women and most of them have been to college. The ones not harassing me are trying to take credit for videos I've made myself.
I've seen other people take on the "Sailor Earth" name with zero trolling. So what is it about the word "Codename" that sets people off?
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