Laying ghosts to rest/Damien post.
Hate meme got taken down because RL addresses were posted; Liz, Hela and I are being accused of having spammed it with addresses in order to get it down. Hela already e-mailed me to check if it was my fault, because of a friend of mine who knows the person who started the meme offered to get certain threads screened, and I replied and told her no, that I had originally agreed to the screening idea and then taken it back once I'd realized it wouldn't change anything -- what's said is said, and free speech is sacrosanct.
Including the right to believe that I'm going to plot with the other mods to spam that thing with RL info to get it taken down. Even though, you know, that would be endangering whoever's info we give out and that's kinda not an ethical move to make. At all.
*gives up* Seriously. I'm over in Austria and was asleep due to insane parental control over my online time. I didn't have a chance to do that, even if I would have. I did, admittedly, have the idea occur to me because it was an obvious loophole and I'm not stupid (I think), but that seemed like an insanely petty thing to do, and I'm not a fan of being petty.
Not to mention that it's obvious enough that other people getting bashed probably thought of it too. Nice to know only we're held in such contempt that people think us capable of it.
Real story behind why the hate meme was taken down can be found here, thanks to Ape having the courage to come forwards and post. The original post saying why it was taken down has also been altered to reflect that.
Now, down to the actual accusations:
The person who called me a "a canon-raping, godmodding player of all-powerful Mary Sues" -- I'm using manga for canon, not anime. If you're used to anime!Duke and then suddenly dealing with the manga!version, I can see why you'd think that since the difference in the characters is really that severe. Godmodding, no -- I've only had Ryuuji fight NPCs and Eros/Loki were plot points for whom we got full consent before we did anything. All powerful -- Eros is a god which is again, why I never wanted to fulltime play him, Ryuuji ICly in-game received the Sennen Items from Ultemecia (whose mun I hadn't know before and definitely hadn't planned it out with) which yes, does make him all powerful and Jason is only human and a lot weaker than two-thirds of the school. Mary Sues, whatever. That one just sounds like it was tagged onto a list of insults like a grocery list. Unless it's refering to Eros who yeah, had to have a personality made up for him because he had to be played instead of just used and is getting popcorned anyway because I agreed to do that for another char's sake over a WART fiasco that happened ages ago.
The too nice accusation -- I'm sorry, but I thought that mods were supposed to cooperate with the playerbase and try to keep them happy. Isn't that just kind of a no-win situation? Either I'm too nice because I give in, or I don't give in and then I'm a bitch. Catch 22.
And as for doing things without consulting the other mods and getting the playerbase smacked, could I have a concrete example, please? The one I'm thinking of was hhsecrets, the secrets comm. It got deleted because I started it up without checking with Liz, and I learnt to run things by her first. The playerbase wouldn't get smacked for my mistakes, that makes no sense and would be unfair.
Concerning Ryuuji getting overplayed, he's a Prefect, the school peacekeeper and a social char. He tends to get involved a lot of things because as Prefect, he's responsible for trying to keep the students engaged and having fun. Plus, again, social char with a lot of friends who like hanging out with him, so that's another reason he tends to be in a lot of RPs. I'm not trying to force him on anyone, and I did honestly consider just only RPing with the muns/chars that I already know like him, but then I realized that since those RPs get posted, that could still technically annoy people even though I'm not making that char interact with him. So I'm really not sure what to do there, though for what consolation it is, I'm trying to get Jason more involved in school stuff despite him being anti-social so that from a mod point of view, I can use him to kick up activity as well which'll take some of the stress off Ryuuji.
The Anzu debacle -- yes. Full admittance there that Ryuuji was OOC but I had originally planned on having him just avoid the Sorting and send in Sal instead who could ICly squib her for being a Mudblood. I generally avoid situations that I know I can't keep my chars IC in or that squick me OOCly, like chan, relationships with a large age difference, abusive relationships -- if someone else wants to play that out, that's their business, but I don't want to have my characters involved. Likewise, I keep my characters out of Sortings for chars that I hate, or I send in a char whom it would be IC to not get on with the Sortee.
As for me only being a mod because of my HTML skills, the original thread where I got modded is here. As you can see, Ryuuji ICly offered to help the Hat out, since if you read the strikes, you'll see his qualifications are being a businessman which I'm definitely not. (College student, for anyone that's interested.) So I got mod status because my char offered to help with the nitty-gritty of the comm, which I guess showed that I'm responsible and like to try to help with things I like.
Also, on that note, the layout was created for the parody comm that HH started out as. The original version was all pink and even more painful to look at than the current one, I promise. I'm not touching the icon wank because I like my char icons and I guess that's just a case of personal opinion, so hate on the icons and the layout all you want.
Er, what else? BRPS. BRPS is a venting/ranting community, and I firmly believe that anyone has the right to BRPS anyone else. However, that does not mean that I would BRPS anyone for disagreeing with me, saying I overplay my characters, or that I'm too nice. Promise. BRPS posts that I've made about HH off the top of my head were about Hecate-mun who was pretending to be three people like a baby Ms.Scribe, and wouldn't tell the truth even when IP addy proof was flourished at her, so I think that one was justified, about my char getting dumped with no OOC warning in which case I had really very little interest in playing with the mun in question again or trying to fix it (because what was the guarantee she wouldn't pull something like that again?), and something that's applied to more than just HH about how people treat RPs like fic and get annoyed when other chars don't react the way they want. And that was kind of a killer run-off sentence, which I apologize for.
I also apologize if I missed anything anyone said. It was a surprisingly big thread (I didn't realize that I'd manage to inspire so much hatred, jeez), and I'm working from memory here. If you have a complaint that you posted there that I didn't address, leave it as a comment to this post and I'll see what I can do.
I'm leaving this post open but since I'm going offline for a week for a holiday that was planned ages ago, I won't be able to reply to anything instantly but that at least gives you plenty of time to plan out your response. I'd appreciate it if they were signed-in replies from actual journals, since after all the venom from the anon meme, I'm kind of scared of it dogpiling over here as well, but I understand that some people are scared to use their real identities/char identities because of mod/brps reprecussion. So, anon comments are enabled.
Comments about the other mods or players will be deleted because this isn't the place for them. This is not another anon meme. This is me, Damien, trying to settle matters with the people that dislike me (because let's face it, whoever said I dislike conflict was dead on with that) and figure out what I'm doing wrong and if it's fixable. I'd rather know for my own peace of mind that I tried to talk politely with people who dislike me than have it lying on my conscience that there's some sort of consensus that I'm a sucky mod and that I did nothing about it.
Obviously, I'd rather have civil, well-thought comments than one-liners about me needing to grow balls since again, this is not an anon meme. It's an attempt to open for discussion. Please don't spam my journal, or get impatient if I don't reply instantly since like I said, I'm going to be away. I realize the timing of this sucks, but I didn't put up the meme to coincide with my holidays and I didn't feel like leaving this post until I get back because I might have chickened out if I'd given myself more time to think about it.
So. Have at it. And again, civility will be appreciated, please.
Edit: The ex-DE-clique has a free pass to hate me for handling that situation badly. And Crowley-mun is -- okay, hate seems kinda extreme in her case -- free to severely dislike me, if she wants to. Anyone else, I'd like reasons, please.
Including the right to believe that I'm going to plot with the other mods to spam that thing with RL info to get it taken down. Even though, you know, that would be endangering whoever's info we give out and that's kinda not an ethical move to make. At all.
*gives up* Seriously. I'm over in Austria and was asleep due to insane parental control over my online time. I didn't have a chance to do that, even if I would have. I did, admittedly, have the idea occur to me because it was an obvious loophole and I'm not stupid (I think), but that seemed like an insanely petty thing to do, and I'm not a fan of being petty.
Not to mention that it's obvious enough that other people getting bashed probably thought of it too. Nice to know only we're held in such contempt that people think us capable of it.
Real story behind why the hate meme was taken down can be found here, thanks to Ape having the courage to come forwards and post. The original post saying why it was taken down has also been altered to reflect that.
Now, down to the actual accusations:
The person who called me a "a canon-raping, godmodding player of all-powerful Mary Sues" -- I'm using manga for canon, not anime. If you're used to anime!Duke and then suddenly dealing with the manga!version, I can see why you'd think that since the difference in the characters is really that severe. Godmodding, no -- I've only had Ryuuji fight NPCs and Eros/Loki were plot points for whom we got full consent before we did anything. All powerful -- Eros is a god which is again, why I never wanted to fulltime play him, Ryuuji ICly in-game received the Sennen Items from Ultemecia (whose mun I hadn't know before and definitely hadn't planned it out with) which yes, does make him all powerful and Jason is only human and a lot weaker than two-thirds of the school. Mary Sues, whatever. That one just sounds like it was tagged onto a list of insults like a grocery list. Unless it's refering to Eros who yeah, had to have a personality made up for him because he had to be played instead of just used and is getting popcorned anyway because I agreed to do that for another char's sake over a WART fiasco that happened ages ago.
The too nice accusation -- I'm sorry, but I thought that mods were supposed to cooperate with the playerbase and try to keep them happy. Isn't that just kind of a no-win situation? Either I'm too nice because I give in, or I don't give in and then I'm a bitch. Catch 22.
And as for doing things without consulting the other mods and getting the playerbase smacked, could I have a concrete example, please? The one I'm thinking of was hhsecrets, the secrets comm. It got deleted because I started it up without checking with Liz, and I learnt to run things by her first. The playerbase wouldn't get smacked for my mistakes, that makes no sense and would be unfair.
Concerning Ryuuji getting overplayed, he's a Prefect, the school peacekeeper and a social char. He tends to get involved a lot of things because as Prefect, he's responsible for trying to keep the students engaged and having fun. Plus, again, social char with a lot of friends who like hanging out with him, so that's another reason he tends to be in a lot of RPs. I'm not trying to force him on anyone, and I did honestly consider just only RPing with the muns/chars that I already know like him, but then I realized that since those RPs get posted, that could still technically annoy people even though I'm not making that char interact with him. So I'm really not sure what to do there, though for what consolation it is, I'm trying to get Jason more involved in school stuff despite him being anti-social so that from a mod point of view, I can use him to kick up activity as well which'll take some of the stress off Ryuuji.
The Anzu debacle -- yes. Full admittance there that Ryuuji was OOC but I had originally planned on having him just avoid the Sorting and send in Sal instead who could ICly squib her for being a Mudblood. I generally avoid situations that I know I can't keep my chars IC in or that squick me OOCly, like chan, relationships with a large age difference, abusive relationships -- if someone else wants to play that out, that's their business, but I don't want to have my characters involved. Likewise, I keep my characters out of Sortings for chars that I hate, or I send in a char whom it would be IC to not get on with the Sortee.
As for me only being a mod because of my HTML skills, the original thread where I got modded is here. As you can see, Ryuuji ICly offered to help the Hat out, since if you read the strikes, you'll see his qualifications are being a businessman which I'm definitely not. (College student, for anyone that's interested.) So I got mod status because my char offered to help with the nitty-gritty of the comm, which I guess showed that I'm responsible and like to try to help with things I like.
Also, on that note, the layout was created for the parody comm that HH started out as. The original version was all pink and even more painful to look at than the current one, I promise. I'm not touching the icon wank because I like my char icons and I guess that's just a case of personal opinion, so hate on the icons and the layout all you want.
Er, what else? BRPS. BRPS is a venting/ranting community, and I firmly believe that anyone has the right to BRPS anyone else. However, that does not mean that I would BRPS anyone for disagreeing with me, saying I overplay my characters, or that I'm too nice. Promise. BRPS posts that I've made about HH off the top of my head were about Hecate-mun who was pretending to be three people like a baby Ms.Scribe, and wouldn't tell the truth even when IP addy proof was flourished at her, so I think that one was justified, about my char getting dumped with no OOC warning in which case I had really very little interest in playing with the mun in question again or trying to fix it (because what was the guarantee she wouldn't pull something like that again?), and something that's applied to more than just HH about how people treat RPs like fic and get annoyed when other chars don't react the way they want. And that was kind of a killer run-off sentence, which I apologize for.
I also apologize if I missed anything anyone said. It was a surprisingly big thread (I didn't realize that I'd manage to inspire so much hatred, jeez), and I'm working from memory here. If you have a complaint that you posted there that I didn't address, leave it as a comment to this post and I'll see what I can do.
I'm leaving this post open but since I'm going offline for a week for a holiday that was planned ages ago, I won't be able to reply to anything instantly but that at least gives you plenty of time to plan out your response. I'd appreciate it if they were signed-in replies from actual journals, since after all the venom from the anon meme, I'm kind of scared of it dogpiling over here as well, but I understand that some people are scared to use their real identities/char identities because of mod/brps reprecussion. So, anon comments are enabled.
Comments about the other mods or players will be deleted because this isn't the place for them. This is not another anon meme. This is me, Damien, trying to settle matters with the people that dislike me (because let's face it, whoever said I dislike conflict was dead on with that) and figure out what I'm doing wrong and if it's fixable. I'd rather know for my own peace of mind that I tried to talk politely with people who dislike me than have it lying on my conscience that there's some sort of consensus that I'm a sucky mod and that I did nothing about it.
Obviously, I'd rather have civil, well-thought comments than one-liners about me needing to grow balls since again, this is not an anon meme. It's an attempt to open for discussion. Please don't spam my journal, or get impatient if I don't reply instantly since like I said, I'm going to be away. I realize the timing of this sucks, but I didn't put up the meme to coincide with my holidays and I didn't feel like leaving this post until I get back because I might have chickened out if I'd given myself more time to think about it.
So. Have at it. And again, civility will be appreciated, please.
Edit: The ex-DE-clique has a free pass to hate me for handling that situation badly. And Crowley-mun is -- okay, hate seems kinda extreme in her case -- free to severely dislike me, if she wants to. Anyone else, I'd like reasons, please.