Work Text:
Honestly, the blog started as a joke, just something to appease his therapist-of-the-month. She had suggested that he use it as a journal, just something for him to vent about the Man In The Lightning. She hopped that if he typed it out and rand read it them it might snap it out his delusion.
Needless to say it had the opposite effect.
He originally just made a few posts here and there on his MySpace and DevientArt accounts. Sure he didn’t have many friends online, much like in real life, but it felt nice to at least pretend someone was listening to him. Like someone believed him about his dad.
The first message he got was a comment on his DeviantArt from an account named CoolCat0602. They had asked if Barry could describe what the man looked like in better detail. Not quite sure how to actually describe what he saw, Barry took to pencil and paper in hopes of drawing what he had seen that night.
Barry had never been the best artist, but Iris was dead set on getting someone to learn with her. He was thankful for his best friends persuasiveness as he attempted to sketch out what he saw. He ended up with a halfway decent portrait of the Man in Yellow, he took a picture of it on Joe’s camera and uploaded it to the computer from there. Barry uploaded his drawing to his account with the title “What I Saw That Night” and waited for a response from CoolCat.
Months went by without a response from the mystery man, in that time he practiced drawing, trying to get a more accurate likeness of the Man in Yellow. Every few months he would post a new drawing using the same method as the first time, he used the same title only adding a number counting up. Joe and Iris never saw his drawings, which he was thankful for. Barry had stopped trying to verbally defend his father against them, he only got berated. If they ever saw his drawings or his blog he would be sent right back to therapy and that was the last thing he wanted.
Almost a year after the initial message and drawing Barry finally heard back from CoolCat0602 that just had a ominous message of “I’ll be on the lookout for him.” He did not know how to respond to that so he just left a simple thank you as a reply. About a week later CoolCat sent a friend request and a direct message.
“Sure thing, kid.”
Barry closed his eyes for a minuet and looked at the message again. Yep, it was still in the same vague style as the other messages before.
It was not for another two months before someone new started commenting on his posts. Someone with the user SpinningJoke started asking about his ideas on weird things like bigfoot or mothman. Barry did not know much about paranormal outside his man-in-yellow so he decided to do some research on cryptids.
They were fascinating to him, entire communities dedicated to paranormal junk. Sure Barry was only really interested in one supernatural entity, but that did not mean he could not read about others. Plus, if he expanded on what he posts about his blog might get more popular. If his blog gets more popular then he could get the word on the man-in-yellow out even more.
So Barry decided to change up his format. Every month he would specialize in one type of cryptid and post mostly about that, with his regular updates on his attempts at drawing the man in the lightning, however he was now drawing his own interpretations of the creatures he was researching at the time.
As time went on his blog grew, getting more followers who encouraged him to spread to other platforms. That is how he ended up with a Tumblr and Instagram to match his MySpace and Deviantart that he already had running. The Tumblr held mostly his longer theories with a few if the pictures and the Instagram had the pictures of what he was drawing with captions explaining the origin of the cryptids.
It seemed like his original two followers had also transferred to the new platforms along with him under the same usernames as the were on the MySpace and Deviantart that had originally inspired him to continue.
Soon he got a YouTube channel up and running after an anonymous ask suggested he make one and use it to explore various haunted places. They were all mostly in Central City because he couldn’t drive and Joe would always give him the disapproving dad face when he asked him to drive him to a haunted location.
So he went around Central doing investigative vlogs for his various media platforms. He would record special investigation videos every two weeks for his YouTube account and post previews on Instagram and Tumblr, while still keeping up with his normal themes on research of various cryptids that SpinningJoke would suggest. Of course, CoolCat would still ask so many thought provoking messages that he would have respond to either with videos on YouTube or long posts on Tumblr and Instagram.
He kept it up even in college, the only difference was that he stopped the investigative vlogs. He stopped the vlogs the summer between Sophomore and Junior year of high school after Joe found out he almost fell through the steps in an abandoned house 20 minutes outside of town.
Barry thought his blogs would die off naturally while he was in college, but he had actually gained a large following with the online cryptid community. He could only hope that none of his coworkers would find out about them while still remaining fairly active.
Then the lightning struck.