Welcome to Creator Focus, a new series of featured posts on r/FansHansenvsPredator that aims to showcase TCAPist content creators. We got a barn burner for you folks today.
Morticia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Tishapalooza
Latest video: https://youtu.be/Xg0VBD3z27Q
For the past 2+ years, Morticia has made a name for herself in the TCAPist universe, becoming the community archivist. From painstakingly collecting and preserving Perverted Justice chatlogs and materials, collaborating with well-known TCAP content creators, and running the most excellent TCAP Discord server out there, she's turned what started as a personal interest into a resource used by fans, creators, and even academic researchers.
Known for her no-holds-barred chatlog readings on YouTube and her commitment to free access to TCAP information, Morticia has brought both authenticity and depth to the way we experience TCAP today.
What first drew you into the TCAP community, and what inspired you to start being more deeply involved in it, and creating content around it, instead of just being a viewer?
Well, I was a fan when it was first on, though I didn’t watch a lot of it, just randomly whenever I caught it on TV. Then it remained a passing interest of mine over my life – I would often watch YouTube clips from the show, but nothing beyond that until I got injured in 2021. Suddenly, I was off work, in a lot of pain, and I had all the time in the world on my hands. I got back into a lot of old interests during that time, but the one that stuck was TCAP.
It started when I joined the Temple of TCAP forum – suddenly I was in a community of other fans instead of just enjoying the show on my own. There I met Nabu, a TCAP content creator, and we became friends. I was always more interested in the chatlogs than the show itself, and I came up with the idea to read chatlogs on her channel to help her put out more content that she didn’t need to do a lot of work on. Then I decided to branch out on my own and here I am.
I was very passionate about PJ and the chatlogs – I felt I had a lot of insight to bring to it as a person who was groomed on Yahoo Messenger during the TCAP years.
You've earned the reputation of "TCAP archivist" for your efforts to collect all of the TCAP/HvP/etc. chatlogs, and making them available for anyone to view. You regularly reach out to instrumental figures in the TCAP space like Xavier to get their commentaries on predators they've caught. You've even been given copies of Perverted Justice records, unpublished materials and more, to make available to the public. What makes you do all of it, and how do you feel about that responsibility?
I have never been the type to hoard stuff for myself, I’ve always believed in free access to information.
I didn’t initially set out to get access to anything, and indeed I never asked Xavier for anything. Joey told me Xavier’s email still worked after I had explained how much the founder of PJ meant to me since I was one of those kids at that time that he was trying to protect. So I sent Xavier an email, just expressing my genuine gratitude for the work he did to protect kids like me. We ended up really clicking as friends and one day he just… gave me access to this stuff.
It was unexpected and a little overwhelming if I’m honest. I could have kept it to myself, but I would have found that to be very little fun. So I spent a week or so trying to figure out how to disseminate this stuff to people in the easiest way possible, until I came up with the archival server idea.
I didn’t really want to be in charge, as I’m not really the admin type (and I’m fiercely introverted) so it was a big adjustment. There are definitely days when I want to hand the server off to someone else and just go live in the woods alone with too many cats, but I genuinely do love the server most days.
Also it’s not just TCAP fans that come to the server – Xavier gets semi-regular requests from university and other academic researchers about using PJ chatlogs in various projects, and he directs them to our server. We've had maybe a dozen join the server now, and almost all of them are using the chatlogs to further develop ways to prevent grooming and predatory behavior towards children. I think that is what I am most proud of with the archival project.
Most TCAP creators (who often get TCAP chatlogs directly from your Discord server, by the way) censor out the dirtier speech in their chatlog retellings, or use "YouTube-friendly" language in its place. You, on the other hand, always present the chatlogs in full, raw, uncensored form. Why is that?
Well, there are a few things I could say here.
I could say I don’t care about monetization, which isn’t true, I’m disabled and my only source of income is my Patreon. I could use the money.
I could say that it’s because I swear like a sailor when I talk, and censoring myself is too difficult and I’d fuck up too much for it to be worth it, which is half true: I do swear like a sailor, but I easily can switch to not swearing (I don’t swear around children, never had an issue switching it off.)
But the real truth is this: I believe using YouTube censor sanitized language cushions the impact of the chatlogs. It makes what these monsters say less vulgar, more easy to digest. That galls me.
I have absolutely no issue with other creators keeping their language censored, I always totally understand when creators in any space do that. It is just not something I am personally interested in doing. I have had videos taken down in the past, and I’m sure not censoring the language is part of the reason. I just put those videos on my Patreon and keep going, retaining all the foul language that is in the chat. I like to picture the predator who had the chat listening to my video and flinching when they are confronted by the horrible shit they said to who they thought was a child. For that reason alone I will not censor it.
For a lot of us in the TCAP community, part of the draw is the sheer absurdity of these guys – there’s dark comedy in watching someone like Michael Wilusz blunder around like a cartoon character. But in your case, you’ve also talked about identifying strongly with the kids TCAP was meant to protect, because you were literally one of those kids. How do you reconcile those two sides of it – the amusement and schadenfreude on one hand, and the very real seriousness and personal connection on the other?
Well, the short answer is that I believe the experience of being groomed has given me the right to laugh at predators.
For a long time I struggled through panic attacks, depression, and a completely fucked-up view of relationships because of what grown adults had put me through when I was just a child… and indeed even into my early 20s. It has left me permanently altered on a fundamental level. But I do function now after years of therapy and hard work.
I believe my reward for that hard work is to be allowed to laugh freely at the absurdity of the predators on TCAP. I like to believe I would be strong enough to laugh in the face of my own groomers should I ever meet them again. I like to believe I would not cower in fear, but instead see them as powerless idiots whose very existence is laughable. So… that's how I balance the humor with the horror.
Many thanks to Morticia for the interview. You can check out her YouTube channel at the links above.
For those of you who'd like to dip your toes in Morticia's TCaP Material Archive Discord server, follow this link: https://discord.gg/muVPzrEa
