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Captain Blubber's Shitty Comic Theatre: KYM-tan

I want to make it clear that content behind the headcannon spoilers is just how I've come to think of these characters. I will sometimes offer some form of rationalization for why I think that. Some have height estimates, but honestly, these can change at a whim given the nature of what they are used for. I don't expect people to significantly modify a template just to account for this. Meme magic and the power of the internet means they can all change sizes to whatever they want. Likewise, personalities can be all over the place for similar reasons.
Honestly at this point, I could definitely get away with the Street Sharks history route. Still, I will clearly mark what is essentially just my headcannon

Besides, all of what I'm going to be posting is basically just someone's head canon.

His scythe is used to basically be the grim reaper of bad entries. I don't think he would use it much outside of that (or maybe it only works on entries and is basically as dangerous as a pool noodle on anything else).
I see him being roughly the same age a KYM-tan (especially if they are twins), but he physically is noticeably smaller (by like, around a foot or more) and appears quite a few years younger. However, he is appears generally more responsible, and mature in attitude than KYM-tan (despite his choice in attire). This can lead to mild harassment by KYM-tan.

He is fairly stoic most of the time, often looking almost upset even if he's in a good mood.

He is probably introverted and given that he mostly deals with KYM-tan, and user's whose entries needed deadpooling, he's not a people person.

Still, I'm certain (whatever their relationship is…) he doesn't completely hate KYM-tan.

Oh, I guess here are a few other images too that I believe are not uploaded on the site proper.

Oh one final thing. About him being KYM-tan's twin. This seems to have come from this post and the one right beneath it. This was back when he was hypothetically proposed to be KYM-tan's evil twin sister, Deadpool-tan. In fact, this physical depiction initially was called Deadpool-tan. This all may or may not be related to a post claiming he is not a cis male. This is an interesting pairing with posts claiming that KYM-tan is not a cis female.

I don't know if he was ever intended to be familially related to KYM-tan or Deadpool-kun, but nothing I could find seems to show that. I've always seen him as someone who is cool and collected, very professional and well prepared, with a somewhat soft, calming, clear voice and a good teacher. Notably taller than KYM-tan (and almost a third taller than Deapool-kun. Smart and confident. Fairly friendly, though can make some uncomfortable because his presence can make them question their sexuality.
Often the mediating agent when there are disagreements/ fights between Deadpool-kun and KYM-tan and a bit protective of them, but much more in a brotherly way, as highlighted in this edit of a Pokémon fan comic for KYM-tan's 10th birthday.

That having been said, I also imagine KYM-tan having made at least one Deadpool-kun x Submission senpai yaoi manga.

She's a powerful spirit, and presumably does ghostly things, becoming invisible, being able to become completely intangible, or becoming fully tangible and grabbing whatever she wants. Probably also able to make who ever she grabs intangible as well so she can take them anywhere with them being unable to stop it. Grim reaper of invalid entries (an possible a few users who make them which is why some just disappear forever after making bad entries. Maybe feeding off them? I imagine more soul sucking that cronch but whichever. She may also be responsible for site some site errors.
Despite her appearance and possible murderous tendencies, she looks terrifying but provided you don't do poor quality entries, she generally doesn't harm other people. Though she still might scare others on occasion for fun (which is even more terrifying because you don't know if you wrote an invalid entry and forgot about it.) I imagine that she can change her voice from "kind of spooky" but mostly normal (especially when you can't see her), to deafening cacophony like screaming banshees in near unison. Probably also creates dark smoke around her which can be small thin and harmless, or thick enough to almost be a liquid and block out spotlight.

Jasper is an Aardvark.

The term wasn't really popular at the time, but I see her as being kind of a early 2000s Chūnibyō weeaboo. Constantly surrounding herself with anime stuff, and throwing in random Japanese words and memes in most conversations. Almost always had emoticons or some type of cute faces in anything she wrote or typed. If you were an impressionable youth into anime, she would be the coolest person you ever knew. If you were an adult or her boss, she would feel like someone who acted almost half her age, didn't take responsibilities seriously, instead indulging in watching anime or reading manga to an unhealthy level, and making a lot of other people uncomfortable because she didn't know how to act around others who weren't weebs.
Overall she would still be nice and friendly (though sometimes too much so). KYM would have brought her on but quickly found out that she wasn't what they were looking for. Her writing for entries was filled with emoticons, incomplete internet speak, and most of her animal entries talked about how cute they were as opposed to the actual relevant information. Her outfit also physically caused problems, with her tripping over it, getting stuck in KYM office vending machines, or her hat getting in people's way but despite all that happening and inconveniencing everyone else and heavily implied to dress more professionally, she kept wearing this all the time.
It was less than two weeks before Know Your Meme tried to get a new girl (but kept Moe-tan for the time being in case the new one was somehow worse.) KYM-tan, however, excelled at everything Mon-tan couldn't. She dressed neater, wrote professionally, and while sometimes acted a bit silly, it was much more measured and not so inappropriate.

KYM tried to get rid of Moe-tan, but she challenged KYM-tan to a magical duel, as a Chūnibyō does… As it turns out, all that anime did actually let Moe-tan use magic, but not well. Before anyone could react she tried to cast a powerful spell, but it immediately backfired. It caused her body to become a card with a picture of herself on it, her soul trapped inside. She couldn't undo the spell from within the card, and everyone just assumed she randomly teleported away and left that card for some reason. So the picture of her on the card was just used as the image for the Moe entry and she was forgotten. Her situation is probably like that of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble with a bit of Oswald in Epic Mickey. Stuck in a form that renders her incapable of interacting with the world, but still aware of everything. Her replacement gaining all the praise, and becoming far becomes more popular than she ever was, fully aware that knowledge that she ever even existed slowly fades into obscurity.

Where as Submission senpai is neat and confident, Submission-tan is the opposite. Very quiet with a shaky voice that isn't used much. And where as Deadpool-kun is personally a bit introverted, she is that times eleven and almost never leaves her office. She is likely a bit malnourished due do a diet of microwave ramen and carryout, as well as almost no sunlight. I'm get some vibes similar to Wagnaria's Izumi Takanashi

She probably just named her office submissionopolis because of the huge stacks of submissions covering it that literally tower like skyscrapers over anyone who tries to enter her office. She may have lost her glasses in her office, but because she needs them for distance, within her office she can at least act like she is okay without them. She seems like she would have a hard time prioritizing taking care of things, so her office has quite a few dirty dishes and takeout food containers. But not loose clothes because she only has one full set of those which she never really washes which is why her lab coat is gray.

This probably lead to a Something Smells situation. People avoid her and she thinks it is because she is ugly, but really it is because she just needs take regular showers, decontaminate her office, and get some clean clothes. It's a shame because she is lonely. I don't think anything was written about her sexuality but there's this pic Ann Hiro made which feels kinda shippy [but if she's Deadpool-kun's older sister and if Deadpool-kun and KYM-tan might be twins… Although Ann Hiro has basically said that Submission-tan is Deadpool-kun's only sister.

Ugh, I get that it's a deliberately edgy internet joke that is over a decade old but still. If I were to try and make her "fit" in any sense, it would be she is a gijinka of edgy users, especially those who deliberately post porn/gore/etc just so they can get banned.

Yeah, she looks a bit too much like KYM-tan. Maybe she's KYM-tan from the future who went back in time to adopt herself as her own daughter? Or worse lol, this is a Fry from Futurama situation where she went back in time an actually is her own mother. This would also significantly complicate her relationship with Deadpool-kun depending on where all that falls… eek…

Head canon this guy is basically just the Team Fortress 2 Heavy Weapons Guy with a poorly fitted lab coat. His dislike of anime is reflective of Japanese meme examples in the past almost never being featured on the homepage.
Tough guy who is physically strong, but often does stuff in a way that misses details or nuances, as sometime stuff on the frontpage gets published with mistakes. A bit crass and rude, but never deliberately man spirited, even if what he does can sometimes come off that way.

Just merge the details of this guy with FEATURED MAN. As I can only go with some description that was left in the forum posts, they don't seem to contradict each other, so long as you are fine with only having a lab coat on your upper body still being defined as shirtless. Have "Featured-Sama" be th name others call him because they know he hates it.

This one feels the least appropriate to include anywhere as she's not a site Gijinka, and I would be very surprised if any images of her actually still exist. The best I can really give is that maybe (?) she could be a Gijinka of the Pokemon gallery, or Pokemon Gijinkas on the site in particular. At the very least she could have been a classmate with KYM-tan (and based on what I recall in the now deleted images, Zubat-chan wasn't very nice to KYM-tan lol.)

If I wanted to redesign her (which I won't), I would make her look more like a zubat I guess? Maybe? I mean, it was just a nickname of an auto generated person that kinda looked a little bit like one at random. Maybe that's just how she looked when young and she's changed into a Golbat or Crobat by now, who knows.

Really don't have much tbh. IDk, maybe she was a cheap clone of KYM-tan made by Behind the Meme or some other meme revival of KYM. They made her to kill the original KYM-tan then destroy KYM from the inside, but something went wrong so she became a SJW instead of an assassin? Probably lives somewhere near KYM headquarters, but doesn't know she's a KYM-tan clone, or even much about KnowYourMeme, if anything. She goes by "Kim" but with a 'y' in it, so Kym.

Click to see larger version on site. No, I have no idea who or what Mafia Boy is lol. Looks like a three eyed Pillsbury Doughboy [with a bad left eye]and a red neckerchief though.

As this one is the physical manifestation of Brand New Members, This one can exist in multiple forms depending on the context. Can be "one" individual that is a gijinka of all BNMs, or you can have many of them that represent a crowd of users. Some BNMs are "protoforms" of users who develop into contributing members. But most are essentially just exchangeable faceless masses who act noobish and never adapt, and are mocked for it.

The physical robot is fairly small, around 30cm/ 1ft tall. May have had emotions at one point but if so, the bot terminated these after being abused by the regular users for "flooding" the site with images. Androgynous/genderless voice, though if robot was built this way or if this was an effect of deleting emotions is unknown. Tries to do assigned tasks, but has to be very explicitly taught how to do it on every little detail to get it right, and even then still messes up on occasion. Generally ignored/taken for granted and only gets attention when working improperly.

In her default mode, I see her being fairly large, due to NSFW having a heavy presence on the site (uh.. I realize that comes across more as a weight thing which wasn't the intent lol.) She would be tall, but closer to 6.5 – 7 feet, maybe 8 than building height. Still, default form would probably be taller than any of the site gijinkas and their associates, outside of Longcat and Tacgnol.

The drawing set had one sketch with BNM being very small compared to her, surprisingly detailed feet… (which I will NOT be posting lol). I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but seeing that and the fact that she is basically the physical embodiment of all NSFW images on the site, she should be a shape shifter. Could be 100 feet tall or only 1 inch tall for Macro/microphila. Could look like a giant balloon with a head for inflation. Could look like a young girl for [REDACTED]. You could even draw just her face for floor tile fetishism. Any depraved fetish (that won't get you banned from the site) she can recreate. (This by extension would mean she has access to a stupidly huge array of super powers. Growing/shrinking, shapeshifting, near invulnerability, hypnotisim, ability to change sex, etc. I bet there are hundreds of other fetishes I can't even think of that would require other superpowers to have any possibility of replicating in real life.
Her attitude and personality likewise changes radically depending on the fetish. Dommy mommy, chubby subby, and whatever else. Probably a bit embarrassed about being seen involved in the weirder fetishes (at least, weird by the general KYM community standards) though. It's probably less she doesn't like them than she does like them she just didn't want everyone to see her liking them, but whatever.

I think she would also get some sort of sick pleasure in fooling users when they were hoping for lewds behind a NSFW tag, but it was really gore/jumpscares/ other not inherently sexual content. Likely has has a sort of evil satisfied grin when that happens.

Unlike NSFW-Tan, Spoiler Tag I see him being just average human size (yeah, I know the only image left is one with them as around the same size, but remember, my head canon is she can change that). Spoilers are comparativly infrequent, but there are times, at least in the past, after a new episode of something that was popular would flood the galleries. As such, I think this would be better represented with something like the ability to create shadow clones: make a bunch of copies that can appear and then disappear at will. Some of these could appear male and some female. Maybe these could take alternate forms that corresponded to what the spoiler was about. Like, ones associated with mlp would look like solid blue ponies with floating disembodied hooves over their eyes, ones from a specific anime would look a solid blue version of a character from the anime with floating disembodied hands, etc.

Not much personality, mostly just stoic and menacing. Very rarely if ever talks, and voice would be clear and emotionless. Have hammer space weapons (again, probably at least loosely associated with the thing that the spoiler is for) that look threatening you if you try to see the spoiler, but generally won't actually be used against you. Maybe also has the ability to spawn other disembodied floating hands that allow him to cover up the eyes of anyone he chooses, multiple at a time. However, that's the only thing these hands can really do.

Because they look so different than the rest (what with being solid colors and nude and all), I see them having super powers, and really don't show up elsewhere, I kind of see them as being in a sort of different "plane of existence". Super Robo Jesus is often seen as the head of the KYMtheon, but these two would be sort of lesser gods. Worshiped (well NSFW-Tan at least…) and able to do things that no mere mortal could, but also not all powerful. They are kinda an ever present "force" but very seldom "there in person" though they can do that too whenever they feel like it, just kind of showing up unannounced. NSFW-Tan, due to her larger default size would likely be slightly clumsy on "the mortal plane" (and I guess some people probably find it sexy I guess?), whereas Spoiler-Tag would be almost robotic and serious.

Know Your Meme's Cringworthy entry, or rather, the image gallery and its history specifically, is one of the aspects of KYM's history that still shapes "ideal" rules on policy today. How much said ideal rules are followed, especially by the staff is debatable… still this was sort of a breaking point for many people between a site to be a place for people to "have fun" and to stick to its stated objective of being for meme documentation.

One of the big problems (that still is a big problem IMO) is trying to stay objective. Obviously, the term "cringeworthy" was and still is used a lot online. If users were documenting the usage of the literal phrases of "cringeworthy" or "cringe" online, that wouldn't have been much of a problem. There is no way to argue that someone else on another website calling something "cringe/cringeworthy" is not objectively documenting that term. The issue was that this was not what was uploaded. Almost no one actually documented the use of the phrase itself. Instead it was just random images that were likely pulled from those Buzzfeed style lists of what said list compilers thought were "cringeworthy," without any context of showing that the phrase was even used. This morphed to being just anything anyone wanted to arbitrarily call "Cringeworthy" meaning literally no clear objective metric could be used to determine if it was relevant, aka "everything could be considered cringe." A lot of the things deemed "cringeworthy" by the KYM community was either fetish art, art by people who seemed to be inexperienced children, or other stuff that required one's personal ideas or political ideology to align significantly with those of the uploader. There were also at least some instances of KYM users going to the original creators of content posted from places like Deviant Art and harassing them there.
And then came the injokes… While at first these were just one off images that were popular, soon user edits of them started popping up. Specifically, they were uploaded to the cringworthy gallery itself. Slapping the faces of some of the injokes in images, memes, and fanart of them. Oh, and literally screen capping other people's KYM users comments/profiles and uploading them to the cringeworthy gallery as a proto "I have drawn myself as the Chad and you as the Wojak" dunk. If you are wondering "wait, I thought we had a clear rule against that" Yeah, this is what made it so we had to have an explicit clear rule against it. I was just starting as a mod at the time. Mod team was split between banning all injokes in their entirety or letting them exist to some extent so long as it was not in galleries of specific entries. Mods finally reached a compromise that, so long as meta content wasn't in entry galleries, they were fine. This was later sort of modified into as long as it was not in the galleries of "proper entries" as a few of them got their own entries (this too was a slight point of controversy but few people really care anymore).

So yeah, a combination of users harassing people on other websites, users uploading fetishes there instead of their dedicated galleries, users uploading meta images they themselves made, as well as just being an overall toxic circle jerk lead to it gaining a particular reputation.

Eventually, the gallery was locked early in January 2014 and was really scrubbed. This was frustrating for many users as they really enjoyed the gallery.

(FYI this image itself is honestly pretty noteworthy as it has gained some site edits, notably the ones about shortstacks. The cat hasn't become a "real character" in the KYMtheon, and looking at the comments I only now found out this is Petey the Cat, originally in Super Diaper Baby 2: Invasion of the Potty Snatchers, and then became a main character of the Dog Man series, by Dav Pilkey of Captain Underpants fame. Like I said, he's not really notable on KYM except for this one image and parody edits.)

The gallery was briefly unlocked on April Fool's day 2015. Anyone who uploaded to the gallery that day was suspended for 24 hours the following day as part of the joke, as this was the time when joke suspensions were still a thing. After that, there really hasn't been much else that has happened with this history on the timeline.

Anyways, that is some of the context as to origin of some of these. This period of time still influences how I think the site should be run. If the point of an entry is to document a phrase, the image uploaded needs to literally have the phrase or some variation on it. Anyone can call any random image "cursed". You should be showing the image that is being called "cursed" along with the text that literally shows someone calling it a "cursed image" as this isn't a subjective judgment call by an individual uploader, but an inarguable and objective metric that is actually documenting the thing that it is being documented.
But I know none of you users are here for that, so let's move on to the funni.

It does not seem to like the direct link. You to the wayback machine, enter "https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cringeworthy/photos" and set the date to January 8th 2014

He's a green ball/sphere with a crown. Given his MS paint art style and extremely simple shape, I think he would "hop around" like Southpark characters in movement. Either has telepathic invisible hands (like Homestar Runner) or can spontaneously generate floating green hands to manipulate things. Has a sort of deep voice, and constantly wants to be entertained by seeing cringe/ other's misfortunes. Think something like Jabba the Hutt if he was half a ton lighter. Not really concerned with "actually ruling" and given his relatively minor appearances, he'd be someone who doesn't get out much, instead wanting people to bring reports of cringe to him.
As for what happened to him: officially, he was "Killeded" by the Rake. Unofficially… I think there may have been an issue between him and Herculoon. King Haw Haw liked to consume cringe in the same way someone consumes media. Herculoon literally consumed it, which is why he's a giant sphere, he is literally filled with cringe. This wasn't so bad when the gallery was still open as there was more than enough cringe to go around. But when the gallery locked… King Haw Haw went spiraling into a depressive slump. His days were spent constantly going through old uploads and trying to enjoy them, before they were eaten up, knowing that new uploads would never happen. Eventually, his cringe exposure levels dropped so far that he fell into a low-cringe induced coma. Having himself nearly dying over a KYM gallery lock and the ambient cringe inherent in the site itself was just enough cringe to sustain his body to not be technically dead.

Also, uhh… Right before the gallery was permanently locked [I mean literally, it was almost the last image if not the actual last image uploaded there] I remembered that someone made a game with Hercloon in it and uploaded an image advertising it in the gallery. I had mostly forgotten about this, and could not find evidence of it on the site anymore. This was what prompted me to see if there was an archive of the gallery. I found the image. The game was described as "Help Nyan Cat get rid of the weird cringeworthy fetishes off of KYM while preserving the good memes!"

I never played the game, and the link in the description isn't to anything valid anymore. It looks like a 2D flash game where you play as Nyan cat (who was on the image gallery loading symbol) and shoot fireballs at things. Presumably, you are also meant to not shoot the "good memes." The only two things that it shows in the screenshot are a stoner Hedgehog and Hercloon. Description reads it was made in around three hours and made by… POOCHYENA!?!?!

Yes, the Poochyena, not just someone that happened to share the name. Just kind of interesting…
Like I said, the game itself appears to be completely lost. If someone happens to know a video playthrough of it, or happened to save the original files, that would be interesting to see.

I really can't say I have much for here that can top the established lore… Maybe he just rolls/floats around randomly like a tumbleweed/ non-helium balloon. Has minimum control of actual actions and can't talk, or if he does it is super helium voice to the point it is almost impossible to make out what is being said ( and maybe too high pitched to be heard by human hearing). Having heroic actions and feeding on cringe… maybe he was slightly misunderstood, and is "inflated" because he was actively consuming cringe on the site, using his body to lock the cringe away to save others who could not repel cringe of that magnitude? It also could be the explanation in legend for the scrubbing of the cringeworthy gallery, and can tie in with King Haw Haw's lore when the cringe all went away.

KYM Chronicles was a project planned by MedleyManiac that, like most KYM fan projects, had great ambitions but real life got in the way. It was to "be a mini-series (less than ten episodes) following the journey of Maribelle Cringemine as she discovers herself and what it truly means to be alive."


It should be considered it's own separate canon of everything else. Most characters were interpreted radically differently from other lore (somewhat akin to them being self insert D&D characters of the KYMtheon cast.) However, given that Maribelle has basically nothing in "mainstream lore" other than offering blood to Jake, and here she was to be the protagonist, it is worth a mentioning.

In the I Need blood specifically had a semi-humanized Maribelle given the name of "Maribelle Cringemine" and Jake the name "Jake Bloodworthy." Maribelle rides a half horse and half doge/or half grumpy cat steed. Maribelle's mother is KYM-tan and her father is a mustached Deadpool-kun. Goat-tan, who is called "Emma" acts as an older sister figure, but they appear not to be related by blood. MedleyManic planned to have Maribelle lose her left arm at some point in the past, but flashbacks would show her with it. Maribelle is also a peeping tom, wanting to see Master Toh Chii's [Humanized the Cheeto] "cheez puff"

Jake claims to be a vampire, but Medley Manic's amazing image clearly shows him in the full sun in the middle of what looks like a desert. Either he's one of those level 9001 vampires who can stand full sun but also are dumb enough to go wandering in the desert when he's about to starve… or he just thinks he is a vampire/is pretending to be one. Was it because of a weird events and he came to a looney toons logic conclusion that he became a vampire? Because drinking blood is his fetish? Because he likes Maribelle and she was really into the Twilight books and was able to hook up with her because she believes he really is a vampire? Whichever answer you think is the cringiest is probably the right one.

Taller than the average person, The Rake likes to hide in the woods and abandoned buildings. At night he runs around and tries to find people to spook and chase after them which he finds funny. However, he's not really into actually hurting people, he just enjoys trying to scare people. Probably has a slightly nasally raspy voice with somewhat of a speech impediment in addition to broken English.

Uh… since he really was only know because he was drawn by the same artist as the Rake… basically anything I have is in connection to that. Slightly shorter and younger than the rake, they probably were close friends despite the age difference. Zalgo wanted to hang around the Rake because he first met him at an age that "being edgy" was seen as "cool." They developed something like a brotherly relationship. As Zalgo started to age though, he matured and stopped acting edgy. Sure, he would act actually scary sometimes, but in the context of being mad or for Halloween or other circumstances that would be "normal" to be scary. For Zalgo, edginess was a phase/act when he was young. The Rake didn't mature and still wanted to be edgy, trying to scare people, live in the woods, and speak broken English. For the Rake, this wasn't an act. Zalgo eventually realized that this might not actually be something the rake can make a real conscious decision about, and that he needs help. Zalgo has tried to do things to take care of the Rake, but it's hard to do that when the rake has sharp teeth, giant claws, and constantly tries to escape back into the woods.
Current Zalgo (adult) would have a deep and smooth almost eloquent voice, though one you would see being more used for a villain. Younger Zalgo would have a raspy voice clearly that of a child trying to deliberately sound scary (mimicking the Rake) but failing at actually being scary, just being weird.