How do you think that first conversaion went when NBK was first brought up?

In other words, who do you think brought it up to who? Who had the idea first?

Pretty sure Dave Cullen and Sue K. would say the "psychopath" Eric was the brains, but I am starting to think it was Dylan...I just don't think he had the stones to do it by himself. He needed help, but he was only willing to discuss the idea with someone who he was sure would say yes. Eric's external anger was a reflection of his own internal rage, thus he found the Bonnie to his Clyde.

It's an interesting question. I think the evidence shows that Eric did the most planning but that might not mean it was his idea first.

Eric might have had more secrecy.

I also wonder how long the planning started after the initial conversation. I feel like from the journals they started planning in the fall of 1998 and it was before the Jonesboro shooting too... but I sometimes picture it has a rant session while playing video games, then Monday at school Eric shows up with preliminary plans in his notebook... and then they just went with it.

I know that when they both started working at BlackJacks, they started to become good friends. I would not be surprised if one of them had a bad day and started ranting. Only for the other one to agree and then just have that seed planted, only for it to bloom to the shooting.

Screamingophelia wrote:

I also wonder how long the planning started after the initial conversation. I feel like from the journals they started planning in the fall of 1998 and it was before the Jonesboro shooting too... but I sometimes picture it has a rant session while playing video games, then Monday at school Eric shows up with preliminary plans in his notebook... and then they just went with it.

Rant session during video games? I'M NOT ASHAMED was right!

I think it was something that probably started out less serious and became more serious over time, considering Dylan's journal showed a process of indecision about it. It probably started out as jokes (since they also made jokes about blowing up the school with their other friends) that gradually over time became more serious. Or, who knows, maybe the topic was broached after watching Natural Born Killers (conversation along the lines of: "haha, we should do something like this to Columbine," "haha, yeah, that would be godlike," "no, but, really, though, have you ever thought about doing it?", "yeah, sure, haven't we all?" etc). But my feeling on it, is that it probably initially started out as a running joke.

I think most likely both of them had thought of the idea of shooting/blowing up the school independently (it's something a lot of people that age think of at some point), but didn't intend to actually go through with it and it was more of an idle "revenge fantasy." Then they discovered the other one had the same idea and so they each had the other person encouraging them to continue. This also explains why each of them seemed to have sort of a split consciousness about the whole thing, ie. they seemed to genuinely have plans for the future despite knowing they would do this. Each of them may have thought the other one might back out and the plan would be off, up until the moment it actually happened.

Ladyloki616 wrote:

I know that when they both started working at BlackJacks, they started to become good friends. I would not be surprised if one of them had a bad day and started ranting. Only for the other one to agree and then just have that seed planted, only for it to bloom to the shooting.

If I recall correctly they were really good friends from eighth grade on. According to Sue’s book they were really close in middle school.

nopenever wrote:

Screamingophelia wrote:

I also wonder how long the planning started after the initial conversation. I feel like from the journals they started planning in the fall of 1998 and it was before the Jonesboro shooting too... but I sometimes picture it has a rant session while playing video games, then Monday at school Eric shows up with preliminary plans in his notebook... and then they just went with it.

Rant session during video games? I'M NOT ASHAMED was right!

Oh noes!!! Well a broken clock is right twice a day. Or so the saying goes

Screamingophelia wrote:

I also wonder how long the planning started after the initial conversation. I feel like from the journals they started planning in the fall of 1998 and it was before the Jonesboro shooting too... but I sometimes picture it has a rant session while playing video games, then Monday at school Eric shows up with preliminary plans in his notebook... and then they just went with it.

IDK about when the planning phase started, but I wouldn't be surprised if the first conversation started sometime in 1997. If we take Eric's statement "we thought of this before anyone else did"* at face value, then it stands to reason he and Dylan probably started talking about it before the West Paducah shooting, which was a somewhat high profile case at the time. Eric wrote a paper for school about the Paducah shooting, so with that in mind I imagine it was the school shooting they thought of as "the first" (I don't think they thought of Whitman as a school shooter necessarily).

*Obviously they didn't, that goes without saying.

downwardspiral wrote:

I think most likely both of them had thought of the idea of shooting/blowing up the school independently (it's something a lot of people that age think of at some point), but didn't intend to actually go through with it and it was more of an idle "revenge fantasy." Then they discovered the other one had the same idea and so they each had the other person encouraging them to continue.

I have started to lean more towards the idea that they thought of the idea independently, but I question how idle the thought really was. I'm willing to bet the moment it went from a fantasy to more and more real was when one of them started talking about getting weapons or making bombs. Maybe Dylan asked Eric about buying him a gun, or maybe Eric decided to show off a pipe bomb or two, but either way I think one of the two started actual, active planning instead of just sharing a revenge fantasy with the other.

QuestionMark wrote:

IDK about when the planning phase started, but I wouldn't be surprised if the first conversation started sometime in 1997. If we take Eric's statement "we thought of this before anyone else did"* at face value, then it stands to reason he and Dylan probably started talking about it before the West Paducah shooting, which was a somewhat high profile case at the time. Eric wrote a paper for school about the Paducah shooting, so with that in mind I imagine it was the school shooting they thought of as "the first" (I don't think they thought of Whitman as a school shooter necessarily).

They might have meant the bombing aspect of it as "the first." There were many, many school shootings in the years before 1997, and you'd think with the amount of research they did, they would have known there were others. (Actually it's weird that the Paducah shooting got so much media attention, because it didn't seem to be much worse victim-wise than many of the other school shootings that had happened in the years before, and plus the perpetrator turned out to be having a psychotic break.)

(Actually, off topic, but I'm looking at the list of school shootings by year on Wikipedia, and there were multiple shootings of elementary school students by adults in the 1980s/90s, which for whatever reason didn't get much media attention....)

Quote :

I have started to lean more towards the idea that they thought of the idea independently, but I question how idle the thought really was. I'm willing to bet the moment it went from a fantasy to more and more real was when one of them started talking about getting weapons or making bombs. Maybe Dylan asked Eric about buying him a gun, or maybe Eric decided to show off a pipe bomb or two, but either way I think one of the two started actual, active planning instead of just sharing a revenge fantasy with the other.

Yeah that's what I meant...it only went from fantasy to realistic possibility when they started preparing by gathering weapons, which was probably by the time they had discussed it together, which was probably 1997.

I mean really there's only four possibilities:
A) Both were seriously planning a rampage attack separately and just so happened to find out the other one was planning the same thing and joined forces (which seems unlikely...what are the chances?),

B) Both had idle revenge fantasies of a rampage attack, disclosed those fantasies to each other maybe via jokes at first, and it only turned serious over a gradual period of them talking about it,

C) They came up with it and planned it together, beginning to end (maybe inspired by NBK),

D) One was planning it and told the other about it and convinced them to join. The person who joined probably had not seriously thought about doing it before, but maybe had thought about it idly.

What we know is that Dylan wrote about committing an attack in 1997, and wanted to do it in a partnership, but Eric wasn't his first or even second choice of the person he wanted to do it with. And we know that he seemed to have a gradual process over time of deciding whether to do it, rather than knowing for sure since 1997 he would do it. So that could mean either he came up with it first and got Eric to join because Eric was the only person he knew who would be willing to do it. Or it could mean they planned it together, becoming more committed to it over time, but Dylan really wished he could do it with someone else instead.

downwardspiral wrote:

They might have meant the bombing aspect of it as "the first." There were many, many school shootings in the years before 1997, and you'd think with the amount of research they did, they would have known there were others.

Honestly I don't get the impression they did very much research on prior killers. Much of their research seems to have been focused on bomb-making, and even that was generally half-assed on their parts. Just about the only genuine research I feel they did was Dylan's paper on Charles Manson and Eric's paper on the Nazis. Additionally every single time, without exception, that Eric talks about previous school shootings he gets the location way off, misidentifying the states they took place in. That to me speaks of poor research (if any).  

downwardspiral wrote:

(Actually it's weird that the Paducah shooting got so much media attention, because it didn't seem to be much worse victim-wise than many of the other school shootings that had happened in the years before, and plus the perpetrator turned out to be having a psychotic break.)

It's because the victims were evangelical Christians in a prayer group and fundamentalist Christians could use the shooting to advance their persecution narrative.

downwardspiral wrote:

I mean really there's only four possibilities:
A) Both were seriously planning a rampage attack separately and just so happened to find out the other one was planning the same thing and joined forces (which seems unlikely...what are the chances?),

B) Both had idle revenge fantasies of a rampage attack, disclosed those fantasies to each other maybe via jokes at first, and it only turned serious over a gradual period of them talking about it,

C) They came up with it and planned it together, beginning to end (maybe inspired by NBK),

D) One was planning it and told the other about it and convinced them to join. The person who joined probably had not seriously thought about doing it before, but maybe had thought about it idly.

What we know is that Dylan wrote about committing an attack in 1997, and wanted to do it in a partnership, but Eric wasn't his first or even second choice of the person he wanted to do it with. And we know that he seemed to have a gradual process over time of deciding whether to do it, rather than knowing for sure since 1997 he would do it. So that could mean either he came up with it first and got Eric to join because Eric was the only person he knew who would be willing to do it. Or it could mean they planned it together, becoming more committed to it over time, but Dylan really wished he could do it with someone else instead.

Despite the sheer unlikeliness of it, I gravitate closer to option A or some variant of it. It's just the way they come across in their personal writings; they both initially use "I" when talking about killing people. No "we" or "me and X". Besides, unlikely evens can and do happen. The chances can be one in a billion but it only has to happen once.

I think really the only objection I have is the use of the word "idle" to describe their fantasies. I don't think either one were simply fantasizing. I think both of them thought seriously, at least semi-realistically of killing people. I have started to feel that if they hadn't met each other they still would've killed people (not necessarily a rampage though) or at the very least got into serious criminal trouble.