March 19 2021

We dive further in The Jen Saga with our next guest, Eliot.  Two years ago Eliot found himself watching a Youtube video: Down the Rabbit Hole, the Final Fantasy House. Settling in for a bizarre tale, Eliot would be surprised when he realized he knew Jen, Angel and Hojo. He had lived with them for a month back in 2003/2004. Now he's sharing his story for the first time

Visit out section on The Jen Saga to learn more

Eliot's Story

Cayla [00:02:54] All right, so I guess I'll start off, so welcome to the Human Exception. We have a special guest. We have Eliot, that I met on Reddit, who also had an encounter with the famous Jennifer Cornet. If you want to introduce yourself.

Eliot [00:03:10] I'm Eliot and I had an encounter with Jen Cornet

Cayla [00:03:17] Oh, perfect.

Eliot [00:03:19] Yeah, I'm I'm old and technology is not, I don't do it good.

Cayla [00:03:25] It's OK. We'll get through this together. All right. So like before, Jen, for you. What was your life before, Jen, like, how old were you when you met Jen again?

Eliot [00:03:41] Boy, you now you're asking the tough questions because the whole timeline for my whole life is pretty fuzzy. And I don't know what I did when or how old I was when things happened. I guess my brain doesn't work,

Cayla [00:03:56] We've been there.

Eliot [00:03:58] Yeah. And, you know, and I kind of told you this when we were messaging back and forth on Reddit. I'm not sure what year it was. I just know that I would have been in my early 20s before that. I just lived in a pretty rural area. I think I was living with my folks at the time, or maybe not. I'm really not sure. But it wasn't a great situation where I was. And then I had a I had a friend out in Texas, actually. I had moved out there and I had a pretty good job. I was managing a liquor store that his mom owned. But Texas, that area of Texas, which was Lubbock, turned out to be not super great for somebody with asthma because there were dust storms all the time. Oh, yeah, it was pretty bad. And I had already been talking to these people who I had met online, just like through the, I know everybody else had this Final Fantasy experience with them. I'm not interested in Final Fantasy. I don't know anything about it other than I watch my brother play it a little bit when we were kids. But I met them through the Hellsing fandom. Just on that forum, they used to have, their website, yeah.

Cayla [00:05:17] So, yes, so Hellsing, a reminder to Halli because she's not as familiar with it. It was an anime and manga that is loosely based on Van Helsing and Dracula, Dracula and then Helsing's descendants that run an organization that basically hunt monsters with lots of vampires, lots of blood and gore and violence, and all that great stuff,

Halli [00:05:41] which you would think would be normally right up my alley.

Cayla [00:05:43] I can't believe you've never encountered.

Halli [00:05:47] No, no, not at all

Cayla [00:05:50] I'm a bit of weeb elitist where like the manga is much better than the anime

Eliot [00:05:58] which version of the anime. Because there were two, there was the original one. That's ridiculous. Then there was the second one which actually followed the it

Cayla [00:06:07] I haven't watched the second one I only watched the original one which was like, what is this? This is not even the same thing.

Nathan [00:06:14] It did that like Fullmetal Alchemist thing, where, it was like, yeah, we're going to do our own thing.

Eliot [00:06:23] the rest of the manga is not published yet, so we'll just mix it up. And it was weird.

Cayla [00:06:30] Yeah, it was super weird

Eliot [00:06:35] yeah, so that's how I met them and it was

Cayla [00:06:41] Sorry, just if we come across anything you don't wanna talk about, just let us know. Do you mind talking about your identity?

Eliot [00:06:51] That's fine, I'm comfortable with that. So I am trans male-female assigned female at birth, I was already pretty well transitioned by the time I met them, at least socially. I've gone by Eliot since I was 15. The only people that call me by my name really are my parents. And boy, they kind of try at least my mom does, just fails at it. She just can't do it, she tries though!

Eliot [00:07:19] but back then it wasn't such such a good situation. So which is why I had bailed out Texas. In fact

Cayla [00:07:28] was Texas much better though?

Eliot [00:07:30] Oh yeah. Texas was much was much better. My friend, the friend I was living with was queer. His mom was queer, she had a girlfriend that she lived with and we lived in another house that was on their same property. So it was a good situation that I definitely would have stayed there if I could breathe.

Cayla [00:07:46] Yeah, breathing is kind of important

Eliot [00:07:49] but yeah, it was just like a casual friendship with online nerds like you would have. Normally we did a lot of online RP, which is something that I still do today with a, I have a friend that I can't be with all the time. It's what I like to do in my spare time, because I'm a huge nerd and too lazy to actually write anything on my own anymore. So that is how I do it.

Cayla [00:08:12] Now, that's totally fair

Eliot [00:08:15] They did not seem super weird when I met them online.

Cayla [00:08:19] People don't always seem so weird online. People are good at hiding it online or just like "oh, it's just the Internet. It's fine"

Eliot [00:08:26] right? You know, I was like, oh, well, people really aren't quite the same on the Internet as they are in real life. So these people are probably just totally fine and normal like me and everybody else. I know.

Cayla [00:08:36] So who did you meet first?

Eliot [00:08:37] Who did I meet first? That's a good question. It was probably oh, do I say Renee or Jack?

Cayla [00:08:44] We can call him Jack. We can say Renee. We can say Hojo, whatever you feel comfortable with

Eliot [00:08:50] I'm going to say, Jack, because that's respectful. Even though the situation is probably... It might have been Jen. Who knows? I don't know. Somebody messaged me and we were talking and then somebody brought up RP and I was like, "yeah, I do that. That's cool. Let's do that." And we did that. And we had like normal conversations aside from that about everyday normal things and so on.

Cayla [00:09:14] Was it just like a fan forum that you guys were just chatting on and then the roleplay kind of started after that?

Eliot [00:09:18] Yeah, I probably posted something, I did some fan art and stuff at the time, so I probably posted some art or some jokes. I like to joke about stuff applied to some threads and I guess it caught their attention sadly for me.

Cayla [00:09:34] Join us.

Eliot [00:09:35] Yeah.

Cayla [00:09:37] So for the RP group, was that like a private thing, like you guys did get an AIM or?

Eliot [00:09:42] Yeah, it was over AIM.

Cayla [00:09:45] And who was in the group at the time, was it just Jen and Jack when you joined or was Angel there as well?

Eliot [00:09:51] It was it was Jen, Jack and Angel. And I probably at the time believed there were maybe more people, but I'm guessing there actually weren't.

Cayla [00:10:03] Yes, Jen has a history of using multiple AIM accounts and pretending to be different people. So Halli and Nathan, just in case you don't know.

Halli [00:10:12] I know y'all can't see me right now, but I'm making a face.

Halli [00:10:18] It's not good.

Eliot [00:10:19] OK, that's that's completely fair.

Nathan [00:10:23] Yeah. I've got I've got my scrunched up, squeezing my forehead face right now

Cayla [00:10:30] So, Nathan and Halli really don't know as much about this is they've kind of been unfolding and educating them as we've been going along with the story. So, yeah, they've got lots to learn. It's it's a lot to dump on somebody if you don't know what's going on.

Eliot [00:10:46] But I'll tell you, after after I left there, I really never thought about it again. And I don't really talk to anybody about it because it was just a thing that happened to me and lots of things that happened to me. And I didn't really think much about it until I was watching random YouTube videos and saw that down the rabbit hole video.

Eliot [00:11:04] And that was only like maybe two years ago. I was like "oh, holy shit. It's those people!"

Cayla [00:11:11] that must have been a super weird shock, but hey, what.

Eliot [00:11:15] Yeah. And then I was telling some of my friends about it and they're like, wait, what? You were in a cult. I'm like, OK, no, let's not get ahead of ourselves

Cayla [00:11:30] All right. So you were talking to them online?

Eliot [00:11:32] Yeah, I was talking to them online, mostly role playing. I was in Texas. I couldn't breathe. And then I was like, I don't really know what to do. I can't really go home. I don't really want to go home back to Minnesota where I'm from. And then Angel said something along the lines of, "oh, hey, my husband works for whatever company in Arizona, near Phenix or in Phenix, and it's supposed to be really good for asthma We can definitely get you a job." And sorry, if you hear those beeps, somebody won't stop messaging me even though they know I'm doing a thing right now. And then she said, "Oh, but I'm going out to Pennsylvania to to meet with our mutual friends, Jen. And at the time, Renee" and I was like, oh, OK. Yeah, I'd like to meet them. I'll drive out there with my no money that I have in mind. So I had a prepaid phone at the time, like a track phone. So that was still a thing.

Cayla [00:12:31] Oh my God.

Eliot [00:12:33] Yeah. So I was like, I'll do it because in two weeks I'll be in Arizona and I'll have a job. And it's not a big deal.

Cayla [00:12:38] And you were going to stay with her and her husband as well, weren't you?

Eliot [00:12:41] Yeah, they were going to put me up until I could get on my feet and get my own place and whatever, and it seemed like an OK deal to me.

Cayla [00:12:49] At any point, did you question like, "oh, this random person I'm talking to is going to let me come live with her husband and get me a job."

Eliot [00:12:59] my brain doesn't work that way. In fact, I've moved from Minnesota to I live in Fargo now. And that's how I moved here was I met somebody on Reddit who was like, hey, people on Reddit. If you want to come live in our house for six months, you can do that for free and get a job and stuff. So I did.

Cayla [00:13:18] This one's working out better, right?

Eliot [00:13:20] Yeah. That was like three years ago and I am OK now and everything, so.

Cayla [00:13:24] Well, I'm glad that worked out.

Eliot [00:13:27] So apparently, I don't learn from my mistakes, just kind of the bottom line.

Cayla [00:13:35] You didn't do any background checks or anything this time? You just went for it?

Eliot [00:13:39] Oh, no, it was close enough. I drove up here first with my best friend and we met him and stuff before I decided to move out here. I didn't want to get into that same situation again.

Cayla [00:13:52] Makes sense. It's totally fair. Yeah. So you're going to meet them in Pennsylvania.

Eliot [00:13:58] Yeah. So she said, hey, I'm going out to Pennsylvania to visit them and come out and then we'll go back to Arizona. So I got my dumpy little car and I drove out there and I had probably less than one hundred dollars my name at the time. And I got there and everything was OK. The first couple of days for a few days, they were weird, eccentric, but not. Distressingly so

Cayla [00:14:26] how long the drive was that from Texas to State College,

Eliot [00:14:29] it was like two days.

Cayla [00:14:31] Wow. Yeah, it's a long way to go.

Eliot [00:14:34] Yeah, I think I stopped and slept in an Arby's parking lot.

Cayla [00:14:37] Oh my god

Cayla [00:14:43] And when you arrived, was Angel already there?

Eliot [00:14:45] Yes, Angel was already there. In fact, I now suspect that she had already moved out there before she ever told me anything about a job in Arizona. I think that was a complete lie. All of that was probably a lie. She was probably already not with her husband anymore.

Cayla [00:15:05] Yeah, so the whole the whole husband situation, once you were there, did she talk about her husband at all?

Eliot [00:15:13] I can't recall I'm guessing she, like, mentioned it a little bit, because I probably was like, "hey, when are we thinking about heading back?" And then she might have been. Like, "oh, we got in a fight, so I'm going to stay longer kind of thing." And then it just wasn't brought up again, so and I was kind of like, oh, this married person is having a problem with their marriage, so I'm not going to bring it up because that seems rude, fair.

Cayla [00:15:41] And you're originally supposed to be there just for like a month, is that right?

Eliot [00:15:44] I was supposed to be there for like two weeks max.

Cayla [00:15:46] Oh, two weeks, OK. Yeah. So you show up Angel's there. Jen and Jack are there and. Like, what was your first impressions?

Eliot [00:16:02] Poor hygiene. So every everybody talks about the skirt that Joe would wear, like as a top one hundred percent. She had that on at least once while I was there. And I'm pretty sure she was wearing it the day I got there.

Cayla [00:16:19] Oh, my God. Oh, my. Did the lab coat make an appearance?

Eliot [00:16:24] Probably, yeah, t there was like a maybe like a tule sparkly tutu type thing that made an appearance at one point. Yeah, it was really strange. I had like three sets of clothes that I owned.

Cayla [00:16:40] So just like whatever, OK. And I think you said that when you get to the apartment, there was like no furniture.

Eliot [00:16:49] Yeah. So I looked at those pictures that you sent me because I wasn't sure exactly where it was. Just I knew it was in State College and I think it was that spot. And I circled the one that I thought it was. It was a basement unit. It was a one bedroom basement. There was like no furniture. I think there was a desk and a chair at the desk in the living room, but there was nothing else to sit on, as I recall.

Cayla [00:17:19] No kitchen table, anything.

Eliot [00:17:20] There was no table, which, you know, I'd done the whole apartment thing on my own. And I also didn't have any furniture, so I really didn't think it was.

Cayla [00:17:32] Well, yeah, like, you know, you're also quite young. It's like, OK, well, whatever, we'll figure out furniture as we go, it's cool.

Eliot [00:17:38] When you're 20 something, you're like, oh, whatever. We don't need furniture. We're young and healthy. We can sit on the floor.

Cayla [00:17:44] Just sitting on the floor is totally fine. That would kill me now.

Eliot [00:17:50] I can't even sit on the floor now. Are you kidding me?

Cayla [00:17:52] Right?

Cayla [00:17:55] You are sleeping just right on the floor when you're there, right?

Eliot [00:17:58] Yeah, I had like a, I don't know if it was like a futon mattress, that there was no frame for something, I had something it wasn't just like on the bare floor what it was. It wasn't super comfortable, but it was whatever it was, a place to sleep. I remember that we went out for steak either the first or second night, I might have been the first night I was there and like I had a good time. It was pretty fun. Like we drove around in the country. It was real pretty and. We ate steak, which I love all the time, I'm pretty sure I paid for someone's, but I didn't pay for everyone's.

Cayla [00:18:40] Yeah, I think they put a pretty big chunk into your last $100, right?

Eliot [00:18:45] Yeah, that was a pretty big dig out of that last little bit of money I had, which, again, I didn't care because I was like out of a job in two weeks, whatever. It doesn't matter.

Cayla [00:18:54] And so the so the first night, I'm assuming Angel then went and slept in the same room with Jack and Jen, correct?

Eliot [00:19:02] Yes. So I slept on the floor in the living room. They all slept in the bedroom.

Cayla [00:19:07] Did that at all seem weird to you?

Eliot [00:19:10] Not really, whatever people want to do is none of my business.

Cayla [00:19:16] Had you had an inclination at that point that there was something romantic there, or are you just thinking like, "oh, just friends sleeping together?"

Eliot [00:19:22] Yeah I just thought it was friends sleeping together at the time, you know, until maybe probably a couple of nights later when it was just like loud violent sex happening from that room

Halli [00:19:31] Oh my god

Eliot [00:19:32] fairly often, to sleep in the living room. It was like... So yeah.

Cayla [00:19:41] At this point Angel's kind of joined in the situation and is now a throuple with Jack and Jen. And supposedly left a husband at home in Arizona.

Eliot [00:19:54] Yeah, that's the impression that I got at.

Cayla [00:19:58] And I think you said that like first couple of days, it was all right, but then, like, the fight started to happen a bunch.

Eliot [00:20:06] Yeah, there was a lot of screaming matches between Renee and Jen and. It was usually Jen demanding something or being mad about something and then Rene trying to defend himself. Or pointing out things that I thought were things that should be pointed out, like, "hey, stop spending your money on this because we need it for rent or whatever else". So it was like it seemed like a normal, argumentative stuff, just kind of tuned to an intense degree. And it was very uncomfortable. .

Cayla [00:20:48] Yeah, I imagine, in a tiny one bedroom apartment

Eliot [00:20:53] And also in public sometimes, which was super awkward.

Cayla [00:21:02] Yeah, that would be uncomfortable. You said that Angel would intervene sometimes, though?

Eliot [00:21:08] She would certainly try. I know I have read and have heard a lot of other experiences from other people stating that Angel was actually very jealous and very violent with people. I had the opposite experience. I think Renee seemed rather jealous of the maybe developing, maybe already developed relationship between Jen and Angel. But Angel and Renee both were pretty much very kind and very sweet to me. Angel was actually very, very nice. Jen hated me. I think she hated me from the get go. Like, she kind of pulled me out there and then met me in person and was like, "oh, this is not the kind of person that I can take advantage of. I don't like you. "

Cayla [00:21:59] And so you said a couple times, like, she kind of yelled at you and took some stuff out on you sometimes. What about?

Eliot [00:22:09] She would do that. But she would do that like, you know, in her weird. I'm this character and you're that character and I'm mad at you for character reasons.

Cayla [00:22:18] Oh my God

Eliot [00:22:27] It was very uncomfortable and I didn't really know what to do about it because I was kind of stuck there, so I just be like, yeah, "OK, I'm I'm this guy that you say, sure, let's do that. Yell at me. Go ahead." And then if she would get real upset, I would just I would just basically pull a trick out of her hat and be like, oh, all of a sudden I'm a really sad little kid and you can't yell at me because I'm sad and vulnerable. And i'm a little small child. Only five years old

Cayla [00:23:01] I'm sure she loved that.

Eliot [00:23:02] Oh, boy. It was good. I think that's part of the reason she hated me so much, she just couldn't get to me

Cayla [00:23:11] just completely undermining all her power and just. Yeah. Oh wow. Did she at any point try to like kick you out or anything?

Eliot [00:23:20] No, I did get locked out once.

Cayla [00:23:23] Oh?

Eliot [00:23:26] We had gone downtown to see some diner or whatever that they like to go to, which I don't think I even ate at because I was completely out of money at that point. But I went whatever it was, what else was I going to do. And they met some people I guess that they knew in passing or knew downtown. And one of the dudes is like, really cool. So I was like, "I'm gonna go hang out with this guy." So. So we did. We, like, go back to his trailer and like, played video games and drink beer. And then I was like, "oh, it's kind of late. I should probably get back to the place I'm sleeping or whatever." So I took off and I get back to the apartment. It's locked, of course, and it wasn't super late. It was maybe like eleven, eleven, twelve o'clock at night, which when you're 20 something, that's nothing.

Cayla [00:24:09] Yeah.

Eliot [00:24:11] Yeah. You know, I banged on the door, they wouldn't let me in so I was like, well guess I'll just sleep in my car and that's what I did

Cayla [00:24:21] And like did they turn the lights off and pretending they weren't awake?

Eliot [00:24:27] Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure they first heard me banging on the door.

Cayla [00:24:30] Oh, my God. That's that's rough. Do you remember the names of the people that you met up with at all or that you hung out with?

Eliot [00:24:39] I don't remember any of their names except the dude that I was with and played video games with was called Spike. Like, obviously, that wasn't his real name, but that was that was what he was called.

Cayla [00:24:47] All right. Well, you know, it's a lead.

Eliot [00:24:50] Yeah.

Cayla [00:24:51] I'm just curious who else you cross paths with, because a lot of the survivors, their stories kind of overlap.

Eliot [00:24:59] I seem to be in this like weird like a hole of time where none of those other people were involved. And I don't think I met any of them or heard about any of them.

Cayla [00:25:10] Yeah. So from what we've been able to narrow down, it seems like that Eliot was there probably around 2003 or so. So like seven months after Icarus was there or maybe longer. But between that and what we know, what happened later, like Mela's first account of Angel, which was in 2005. So somewhere between there, which is a dead area and then your story shows up, which you've never told your story anywhere else other than like a couple of Reddit comments. Right?

Eliot [00:25:44] Right. Yeah. I think I surprise commented on that YouTube video I saw. And then I was like, I wonder what else is out there. So I think I went and looked it up on Reddit and then saw something and commented on there. And I'm guessing that's how you found me.

Cayla [00:25:57] Yeah that's how I found you, I think it was, it was a Reddit thread about the down the rabbit hole

Eliot [00:26:05] that makes sense. Yeah.

Cayla [00:26:06] Yeah. I troll some of the comments for that kind of stuff to look, because there were times that we've come across people like you, whose stories just haven't been shared yet. And I was like, "what? What is going on, what happened here?" I'm trying to fill in the gaps as much as we can, because the last thing we know is she was in Hannibal in 2015, but we don't know where she is now.

Eliot [00:26:25] Yeah, it's funny because, my best friend now, the one that RP with and I talk to her, that's who was messaging with me a minute ago. She was on the Hannibal fandom. So I think she may have run across her a little bit. So she was like a little surprised when I was telling her about this. I'm like, "hey, so this thing happened and I think you've talked to this person. "

Cayla [00:26:52] Oh my god! When you realize how big of a like Internet deal this was, how did that feel?

Eliot [00:26:57] I was I was honestly surprised, like. But it was a little, it was a little overwhelming, in fact, I think when I saw that video, I actually literally had a little bit of a panic attack. Like I was like, oh, trauma. Here it comes. But yeah, I had no idea that it was such a, like a meme-able thing that had happened,

Cayla [00:27:24] Internet urban legend. So you were there with them and you ended up staying, did you end up staying for a month? Was how long you ended up staying in total?

Eliot [00:27:34] Yeah, I was there for about a month. Eventually I was. Food wasn't really a thing, I literally can only remember eating four times in that month. I think we we had a subway once. She cooked once. And I will say this, her cooking was delicious. It was very good.

Cayla [00:28:02] But she just never did it.

Eliot [00:28:04] Never did it. She made like some like pot roast kind of thing. And man, it was super delicious. Yeah. And I've heard and I've read, oh, she likes meat. She super likes meat. I'm cool with that. I love meat. But that's what it was. It was like a pot roast with onions and that was it. But it was really good.

Cayla [00:28:19] That's impressive.

Eliot [00:28:20] Like and then I remember one time Renee and I went out. And we were hungry and didn't have any money, so we went into it was like a Wendy's or an Arby's, I think it was a Wendy's or whatever they have out there that is a Wendy's. And we just were like taking food off tables that was left.

Cayla [00:28:43] Oh wow

Eliot [00:28:49] I lost 40 pounds in the month I was there. Yeah, so I wasn't feeling so good. So eventually I scrounged and scraped together enough money to buy like a 20 dollar card from my track phone. And I texted my brother and was like, "send me money now, I need to get out of here!"

Eliot [00:29:07] So he did. And I think I left that night in the middle of the night, didn't say anything. I just took off.

Cayla [00:29:13] So like the two weeks pass, when you were expecting to only be there for two weeks. So you just go to Angel, you're like, "hey, what's going on?" And then she just said "We're staying"

Eliot [00:29:24] Yeah, basically. That's when she was like, oh well I'm having a hard time with my husband or whatever, or I'm deciding to stay a bit longer.

Cayla [00:29:34] So were you just kind of like waiting and hoping that things would kind of sort out at that point ?

Eliot [00:29:38] Pretty much, I was stuck. So even if I hadn't been waiting for something to happen, I was kind of just there.

Cayla [00:29:46] Yeah. Do you want to tell the story about your car?

Cayla [00:29:48] Oh, yeah.

Eliot [00:29:50] I drove down to the gas station one day to either get a drink or just maybe just put some gas in my car to drive around. And the whole entire wheel came off of my car. I was like, I was going, like, downhill towards a gas station and see I see a tire in my front window and I'm like, "oh, that's unlucky". And then, "oh, my. Oh, it's mine. "

Halli [00:30:13] Oh. Oh, my God.

Eliot [00:30:17] And that was the whole thing, because the whole entire wheel, the tire, you know, with the rim and everything rolled down the hill and, like, bashed into some guy's door who was at the gas station. And then he was like, "oh, you got to pay me for the damage". And I'm like, "OK, here's my insurance information" I never heard about it again.

Halli [00:30:34] Geez

Eliot [00:30:35] Yeah, I don't want to make accusations, but after things that I've heard, I think maybe somebody might have loosened my lug nuts?

Cayla [00:30:47] Pretty big coincidence. That must've been terrifying

Eliot [00:30:56] I thought it was more funny and awful than scary, but,

Cayla [00:31:01] Well you had a good sense of humor about it then. I'm assuming you ground to a hault pretty quickly?

Eliot [00:31:07] Oh, I drove on the rotary brakes because that's all I had, down to the gas station

Eliot [00:31:19] It was it was maybe 200 yards away at that point. So I just like limped it down there and was like, well, I guess I put my tire back. Two of the lugnuts were missing. I assumed they had just flown away. So I secured it with the two I had and then couldn't really drive it after that for a while till I got some more.

Cayla [00:31:40] So is that what you ended doing, repairing your car and then getting the hell out of dodge?

Eliot [00:31:42] Yep, that's what i did

Cayla [00:31:48] You're out there changing your tire in the middle of the night.

Cayla [00:31:56] One thing you mentioned was that you guys used to go on night drives?

Eliot [00:32:00] Which is something that I always did anyway. I grew up in the country. There's not a whole lot to do. You would just get in the car with your friends and drive around. That's what you did.

Cayla [00:32:13] Did Angel have a car, or were you the only person with a car?

Eliot [00:32:14] It was Angel had a car and it was her car that we took on these drives because my car didn't have tire?

Cayla [00:32:21] Yeah, fair

Eliot [00:32:23] also couldn't fit, you know, for three or four people. And it was a very small car and. Yeah, so we'd go on night drives and I thought it was fun in general until things would get weird like. You'd be driving around and they'd be talking about like all the local folklore and stuff and that kind of stuff is cool. I don't remember any of it, but it was neat. There's a bunch of old cemeteries out there which is kind of cool to see, but we'd drive out to a place and drive around and chat or whatever, and then it'd be late and we'd be tired, or at least I'd be tired and like, "OK, we're going to head back now". And then we'd be lost, I guess. And then they would say dumb things like, "oh, the roads move here". So you get lost because the roads move with magic or whatever. And I just be like, "oh, OK. Can we please just go back to your apartment? I'm tired."

Halli [00:33:22] How long would it take for that to happen?

Eliot [00:33:25] For the roads to magically move? Probably forever

Halli [00:33:27] No for them to like devolve into, you know, this bullshit like you said it would,

Eliot [00:33:40] Everything, absolutely everything all the time would depend on whatever mood Jen was in. Magical bullshit happened at Jen's whim only,

Cayla [00:33:51] Of course. And when it happened by Jack and Angel just followed suit?

Eliot [00:33:55] Yep, they sure would.

Cayla [00:33:57] Oh, you're just like, "oh, what's happening when it re pretending to be right now? "

Eliot [00:34:00] Yeah, pretty much. I'd be like, oh, well, OK, I'll go along with this because I don't want to get screamed at because I'm pretty nonconfrontational person, or at least I used to be. Now I like I'll do it whatever, I'll fight you. Let's go.

Cayla [00:34:15] If you weren't going along with one of Jen's like fantasies at the time, would she get aggressive with you?

Eliot [00:34:19] She would she would she would start to say things like, "oh, you're not responding right. Because you have whatever evil character of the week that we don't like in you. So we're going to attack you and whatever." But they couldn't do anything to me because I was. Stronger than they were, Angel was bigger than me, but I was stronger than they were, so they never tried to like physically attack me

Cayla [00:34:49] They just did magic at you?

Eliot [00:34:51] Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, boy, boy, we would have to go outside and do magical battles. It was so awkward, Jen, it'd be like like waving a stick around, being like "I'm fighting the evil fairies or whatever the fuck". And I'd just be standing there like, "yeah, go get them. "

Cayla [00:35:09] "You do it girl!"

Eliot [00:35:10] "It's like it's a nice night. Get them. Can I go back in now?"

Nathan [00:35:17] "I forgot my beer. Hold on. Hold it. Hold that stance. I'm going to go grab my beer"

Eliot [00:35:22] I wish I had beer while I was there. It would have made it so much easier

Cayla [00:35:29] You said that a couple of conversations with Jack about the situation and how it wasn't really a good situation for him and that he should consider leaving?

Eliot [00:35:38] Yeah, so like I said, I got along with Angel and Jack pretty well. I liked them both. I think Angel maybe had some... I mean, she lied to me, obviously, so that's a problem, but Jack just seemed like really that he was in this situation and didn't know how to get out of it. Basically, he felt like it felt like to me he knew it was all bullshit. So he was like the same as me. But he's been stuck in it so long. And he did have feelings for Jen. You know, she was his lady. And so it just seemed like he felt like he didn't know what to do and he was stuck, so I would try and we would have conversations and I'd be like, "hey, you know, I know you love her, but maybe this isn't the best situation for you? If I bail, you know, you're welcome to come with me. I can find you a place to stay. You know, you can make friends, normal friends that are you know" It seemed like a couple of times he was like really seriously thinking about it. "Like, yeah, I know, you're right. This is a shitty situation. I don't really know what to do." But in the end, you know, he would just go back to doing the magical bullshit with Jen. So it's kind of sad.

Cayla [00:36:54] And he was quite he's quite intelligent, wasn't he? I think, like I said, he had some pretty good schooling.

Eliot [00:37:00] Yeah, he was pretty sharp, actually. I mean, there were some serious depression issues that were very obvious to anybody from the outside there. And I don't know how much of they had to do with the situation or how much they had to do with things like gender dysphoria and that kind of thing. But, um, yeah, it's really sad to me that that is where he ended up in. I'm actually glad to hear from you that he's out of that situation now has transitioned and yeah, I hope he's doing well.

Cayla [00:37:32] 2009, him an angel escaped.

Eliot [00:37:36] That's good to hear.

Cayla [00:37:37] Yeah, so took a bit, but they got there eventually. What did Jen refer to, Jack as? Was he going by male pronouns at that point?

Eliot [00:37:50] So I think it was more of a gender queer situation or not binary situation at that time in quote unquote real life, it was Renee. And the pronouns didn't seem to matter. Yeah, but, you know, for Jen, it was always about whatever character. So if Renee was Alucard, he was a he if Renee was some other character that was female and he was she that kind of thing.

Cayla [00:38:22] So it's just kind of slip in and out, whatever Jen felt like at the moment.

Eliot [00:38:27] Yeah. And that's that's the other thing too. It's like Jen controlled that aspect, which as a trans person I thought was horrible, I was like, "Why don't you just let Renee make their own decisions about what they're going to be?"

Cayla [00:38:40] Yeah, I mean, it's really difficult, especially when you're at that point, you're kind of figuring out what you want to do because like, it sounds like he was in the middle of kind of figuring out where his identity led lay. Just making it all the more confusing.

Eliot [00:38:54] Yeah, and I think that was, I've seen in several places now that it seems like Jen targeted, especially trans masculine, assigned female at birth people, and it may be because, you know, young people tend to be confused and young and not really sure about things. But none of that stuff worked with me because I was already positive.

Cayla [00:39:19] Yeah, you're pretty certain who you were at that time

Eliot [00:39:21] Oh, yeah, for sure.

Cayla [00:39:24] Yeah, there's definitely some sort of aspect there of her targeting people in those situations and yeah, like you said, is it just because they're young and they tend to be questioning or is it specifically looking for people questioning their gender identity? It's hard to say. Angel was completely identifying as us as female, though, right?

Eliot [00:39:43] Yes. Yep.

Cayla [00:39:46] Interesting,

Eliot [00:39:47] Yeah, and I didn't even know that Angel's not her name, right, it's like Anna or something. I never knew that.

Cayla [00:39:54] Yeah, I thought it might have been Angelique, who knows? It's Anna, Angel, one of the million names that they all use. So the entire time you were there you said that no one went to work or school or anything, right?

Eliot [00:40:11] Correct. The only time anybody left the apartment was to like, go buy something with money they didn't have or to go on a drive to go like check out a cool cemetery. I remember going to the- I don't know if somebody was like I was in school and stopped going or if they were just in between. What do you call it?

Cayla [00:40:40] Semesters?

Eliot [00:40:41] Yeah. Because I do remember going to the school, the university and going to the bookstore there or the library there a couple of times with Renee.

Cayla [00:40:51] Yeah, Jack was going to school. And I know that he was still going around the time that Icarus was there. But yeah, if you're saying that he didn't go for an entire month while you're there, I don't know how much he missed if you just kind of dropped out of that point.

Eliot [00:41:09] Yeah, it could it could have been I mean, he still had access to the library, like you had to have a card, whatever to get in, I remember that. I was going to say, yeah, but nobody was working, nobody was going to school or anything like that.

Cayla [00:41:26] But there seem to be some sort of influx of money coming from somewhere from somewhere?

Eliot [00:41:30] I don't know where. I don't know if it was just like. Again, I don't know how much truth there was, and I don't know how long Angel had been there, but I got the feeling all the money was what she had brought with her.

Cayla [00:41:46] Yeah, that would make sense. Wow, that's that's wild. So the night that you left, you said you left without saying anything, you didn't try to talk to Jack one more time? You just wanted to get up and go

Eliot [00:41:59] Yeah, I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to get the heck out. And I went and lived with my grandma.

Cayla [00:42:06] Where was your grandma living at that time?

Eliot [00:42:08] In Minnesota. Still, in the Twin Cities.

Cayla [00:42:10] All right. So another long drive, but your car held together. Got you there?

Eliot [00:42:15] It did. In fact, I had that car for a couple of years still after that.

Cayla [00:42:20] Oh, wow. It kept going!

Eliot [00:42:22] It did.

Cayla [00:42:24] That's great. That sounds like - that's crazy. You are now part of Internet history, I guess.

Eliot [00:42:32] Yes. I don't know, it's weird

Cayla [00:42:37] Yeah. Halli, Nathan, you got any questions?

Halli [00:42:42] I just don't even know

Halli [00:42:47] It's still it's just like every time and obviously Cayla has been the one who's been digging into this, I'm not going ot speak for Nathan, because I'm just over here like, I have no idea what's going on, but holy shit

Halli [00:43:07] We had a really long conversation about because, you know, we've all experienced certain things in our lives that have been traumatizing and difficult. And and one of the things that I'm sure Cayla emphasized with you was that we wanted to make sure that we were being very, very respectful and very understanding. So I just wanted to say I appreciated you coming on to talk to us, because I know this shit is just like fucking Buckwild.

Eliot [00:43:36] Yeah, it's kind of crazy, of course, now I think it's hilarious and just weird and just way out there, but at the time it was traumatizing. I didn't really want to talk about it after I got back.

Cayla [00:43:50] Did it impact you for a while after that?

Eliot [00:43:52] Oh, I wouldn't say it impacted me deeply because I had a pretty good support system where I ended up. And I just kind of carried on with my life because what else are you going to do? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, like for for a while I didn't really want to meet anybody that I had met online, but also that is where I've met most of my best friends is online. So it didn't really impact me too deeply.

Cayla [00:44:22] Did it make you like a little gun shy about meeting new people?

Eliot [00:44:25] No, I mean, I've always been socially awkward anyway, so I didn't really like meeting new people to begin with.

Cayla [00:44:32] Fair, yup, people are scary.

Cayla [00:44:41] What's your relationship with Hellsing like now, did that that negatively impacted at all?

Eliot [00:44:46] Not really, because I also enjoyed Hellsing with my my actual real life best friend who passed away a couple of years ago, but. In fact, even after that, he was obsessed with Ralph Lister, Walter, yeah my buddy was frickin obssed. He had like this straight gay crush on Walter

Eliot [00:45:21] So we were like looking up, looking at movies and whatever that he was in. And we watched some dumb ass movie that we never would have watched called Mr. Woodcock because we saw that he had a credit for that movie. We watched the whole thing and we didn't see it. So he's like "I'm man!". So he got on the Internet, he's doing something. And then he picks up his phone and he makes a call and he leaves a voicemail.

Cayla [00:45:45] Oh, no,

Eliot [00:45:47] because he found Ralph Lister's phone number

Eliot [00:45:51] He was very professional. He was like, "hey, we're just wondering at what time timestamp you are supposed to show up in this movie". And about 20 minutes later, we got a call back. So that was that was very exciting.

Cayla [00:46:07] Oh, my God.

Nathan [00:46:08] Oh, wow.

Cayla [00:46:12] That is amazing.

Eliot [00:46:13] Well, it was his birthday, so he always had said "that was the best birthday present I ever got!"

Cayla [00:46:22] Like he called back. And he was a totally cool dude?

Eliot [00:46:26] Yeah he was like, "well, it's supposed to be at this time stamp, but he actually ended up getting cut from the movie or whatever else". That was pretty much the extent of the conversation

Cayla [00:46:32] that's still amazing that he called back!

Eliot [00:46:37] Yeah, pretty funny. But then, you know, like, I just have never really super been into anime to begin with. And if I watch something, I watch it, I'm like "that was cool" and then I move on to something else anyway.

Cayla [00:46:49] Yeah. I mean you don't obsessed with it and pretend that you were the characters for years on end?

Eliot [00:46:53] No, no, no.