(Untitled)
Note: UnFlocked on October 2, although all comments not be Heidi or Angua are screened. If your comment was screened, let me know if you want it unscreened
From LadyMaidMarian's LJ:
That's where most of this hatred started. When an H/Ger spoke it was GT speaking, but when an H/Her spoke it WASN'T FA speaking. Why is that?Perhaps it's because FA is ( Read more... )
From LadyMaidMarian's LJ:
That's where most of this hatred started. When an H/Ger spoke it was GT speaking, but when an H/Her spoke it WASN'T FA speaking. Why is that?Perhaps it's because FA is ( Read more... )
GTers in general were horrified, disgusted, and infuriated by this community and by the general comments about them, and they tried desperately to clear themselves of association with the horrible "nutty Christians." They sought diligently through their member records, they asked for help from other sites and communities where these "Nutty Christians" might have posted, and they were delighted to find evidence to (as they thought) conclusively clear themselves and make it clear that they had been framed, and "Fermatojam" and "Killiganhashope" and "Pottersginny" and "HGEmpress" were all sock puppets, created for the purpose of inciting uproar and making GT look bad.
They published their evidence, and THEY WERE NOT BELIEVED. Praetorianguard posted her terrifying legal threat, and - I apologize if my memory is faulty - but I *do* remember you commmenting approvingly to her post either on FAP or LJ, symbolically adding your lawyerly support. I think that they hoped that people like you would examine the evidence they offered and compare it with your own IP records, from your website and your LJ's, to see if it was credible. Instead, they were, as they saw it, threatened with a libel suit by FA administrators.
A day or two later, the person they believed was responsible for deliberately running a successful smear campaign against them and orchestrating a huge outpouring of hatred toward them WAS MADE A MOD AT FICTION ALLEY. This person was named as a mod after only thirty-one posts, twenty-one of which simply pimped her own fics. It was definitely perceived by GTers (and by me, for that matter) that she was so named in support of her claims of being libelled by GT, and I'm sure they thought that you, personally, were involved in the appointment.
To them, I think, that was the last straw. They were widely hated and reviled, people - FA mods in particular - felt free to mock them and associate them with horrible beliefs, and no one would believe them when they defended themselves. No one seemed to even consider the possibility that they might be telling the truth.
When they say "H/Hers," or "FAers," or whatever, they're not trying to say that FA is an H/Hr site, or anything silly like that. They're simply using a convenient shorthand for "the people who hate us." And, yes, I am positive that they perceive you as a person who hates them, along with some of your friends such as Cassandra Claire, msscribe, and -- in earlier times -- QueerAsJohn, Stacy, Ebony, etc. And, errr, the Fandom Bitches. The old-GTers don't necessarily know your shipping opinions or the rest of your personality because their main contact with you comes ONLY when you make a comment about them at FA or on Fandom Wank. Besides a few obvious public facts, all they know about you is the negative things you say about them. To them, it all started with an H/Her (Cassie) spontaneously attacking H/G and another H/Her (msscribe) framing them and administering a hate site against them. I wish they wouldn't say "H/Hers" or "FA" in the silly overgeneralizing way they do, but they don't ask my advice on that (or on anything :p).
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No, wasn't me. Was this another thing from last May/June?
Yes. The whole mscribe/clarabella thing/fermatojam/pottersginny. They perceived Praetorianguard's post (and their perception of your approval of it) as an accusation of lying. Because, of course, a truthful accusation cannot be libel! Many, many people, on those threads and elsewhere, mentioned the possibility (or downright accused them) of manipulating the screenshots to frame msscribe.
Actually, msscribe didn't accuse anyone in particular.
As I recall, she didn't, but everyone knew whom she meant, it was widely discussed, and many people seemed to believe it. That widespread perception is mentioned above on this thread by Ataniell.
But then again, I don't take F_W too seriously.
Well, I take it a little more seriously than you do. I've been wanked a couple of times, and I shrugged it off (as I'm sure you do), but some people - especially people who aren't used to the rough give and take of the fandom - find it very painful and distressing, especially when hundreds of hostile personal comments appear on their LJ. I know that Arabella (because of the unfortunate timing) and Perceval (because of her character) suffered distress when they were wanked by "Sporkify" over the incest thing.
Most of the former GTers tend to be the type to suffer distress when wanked, especially because it is pretty much the ONLY way the fandom interacts with them. And you know, think of it this way: When you post on a thread full of stinging insults, even if you don't say anything very bad, it FEELS like you're endorsing what the other people have said. For instance, in the Arabella wank, people said all kind of nasty (and untrue) things. Then, as I recall, you said something like ("I have less and less respect for her"). Not so bad in itself, but it could definitely be understood as implying that you endorse EVERYTHING negative said on the thread. I'm sure similar things have happened with your comments on GT. Honestly, I don't remember exactly what you've said and not said, but *I* definitely got the impression from your public comments that you disliked them and thought the worst of them, as a group. If I - who don't consider myself a GTer at all - thought that, I'm sure they did as well.
I am, actually, very very certain that Sporkify is, at least, *not* one of the FA mods that I'm friends with, because my friends knew that I'd been angsting over how to reply to Arabella's December post about appropriate content in fanfics, and thus, Sporkify would never have had to do an ETA to add in a mention of me into that wank. I did ask, yesterday, on our internal list, if anyone knew who SPorkify was, and nobody has any clue.
If I had *any* understanding of *what is was* that caused people, including *you* to think this, I think it would go a long way towards building bridges. And yes, I think I can be calm and objective enough to engage them in meaningful discourse. If there's any hope of having a meaningful discourse, it is worth it, to me, to try.
I came to a conclusion on my own as to who "Sporkify" is (from various circumstantial, stylistic and motivational evidence), and then I discovered that other people, including former-GTers and others, had come to the same conclusion. The person I suspect is definitely an FA Mod, but I don't know how close you are to that person, how much you talk to them, or whether you consider him or her to be a friend. The person is on your friends list, but you have a very large one. :p I definitely believe that you and your friends have been misled and manipulated by a very dishonest person among your... acquaintances at least, if not close friends.
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You know, I SAID that you can stop the feuding, but I don't know if you can. I believe that you have a better chance than anybody, though. I have NO IDEA what Imogen may or may not have told people -- I've never heard anything about you from them. But the former-GTers I know are very bitter, and they honestly think that you and your friends and associates utterly despise them. You missed some BAD SHIT when you were out doing much more important things last year.
Every time someone uses the terms "crazy" or "insane" or "stupid" or "sickening" to describe a *group* (as versus an individual, where such description is based on firsthand observations or actual interactions), there's a problem.
I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agree.
I consider myself an FAer (and I'm no H/Her, that's for sure!) AND an SQer, and I joined GT as well (though, honestly, I only did that during the Pottersginny debacle, to show I wasn't going along with that mob frenzy). I hate stereotypes and generalizations and mass put-downs.
One last thing: Heidi, I respect you for not holding grudges and for getting over things, but not everyone can do that. Some people are much more sensitive and thin-skinned, and they *remember* insults and criticisms. Like forever. You could go to a lot of effort to build bridges and still not succeed. I think even the effort would help, but I can't promise anything. I am speaking *about* the ex-GTers, but I can't speak *for* them. I only know two of them, after all.
Also, I can't emphasize enough how much I am speaking for MYSELF, and not, in the slightest, for SQ. I am not in A&Z's confidence, and I couldn't even begin to speak for them. I have never discussed any of this with either of them, or any SQ admin.
Another last thing: I'm planning another trip to Miami next week, exact dates still uncertain.
Now who's longwinded?
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And given some of my conversations in the past week, I am not sure anyone *can* build a bridge, but it doesn't mean I won't try. If there is to be one, then the ex-Gts need to get over the persecution complex they have, and actually engage in dialogue with people who don't agree with them on 90% of the universe. That's a fundamenally necessary starting point, and I think it's possible, but I fear it's not likely.
I hope it'll happen. I hope some of them will show up for POA in NYC or Salem or some of the other fandom goings-on. I hope they enjoy the *fandom* and realise that F_W is not the fandom, not even a subset, but rather, most of the regulars there not even part of the wider HP fandom, much less any subset that pays attention to now-defunct sites. They snark about *everything*. I look at Chibimono, who just deleted her LJ because she was hurt by the comments (many of which really were deserved) on F_W about the Escape from Azkaban boondoggle; that's an overreaction and it empowers the regulars at F_W more than they deserve.
And all that being said... you up for lunch tomorrow or Saturday?
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I know. And I have tried a few times to talk with Arabella about it, but she's not replying to me, so I feel like I'm talking into the air. Sigh.
Most of the former GTers tend to be the type to suffer distress when wanked, especially because it is pretty much the ONLY way the fandom interacts with them.
But that's because they keep saying that they don't WANT to be a part of the fandom! When we started with Nimbus, I asked them if they wanted to host a banner, or have a thread where we could post the CFP and encourage presentations and stuff, and they said no. They lock their LJs to posts from anyone who isn't on their friends list. They used to ban people from posting on their site. They kicked Irina off completely. There's only so many times that people (read: the rest of the fandom) can get kicked before you really give up trying to extend a hand of friendship.
For instance, in the Arabella wank, people said all kind of nasty (and untrue) things. Then, as I recall, you said something like ("I have less and less respect for her").
No. I said no such thing. If you can find where, that would be great, but really, Angua, you keep remembering me being *involved* and *commenting* on things that I wasn't involved with and didn't comment on, or at least where I didn't say what you think I said. And I don't know how to deal with this.
*I* definitely got the impression from your public comments that you disliked them and thought the worst of them, as a group.
I dislike Imogen, because I know that she lied to her co-admins about Chryslin. I dislike Chryslin because I know that she lied to Imogen and others. I dislike kvader because he's lied about me, personally, when he should have/could have known better. Zat's about it. And really, can you blame me?
I came to a conclusion on my own as to who "Sporkify" is (from various circumstantial, stylistic and motivational evidence), and then I discovered that other people, including former-GTers and others, had come to the same conclusion. The person I suspect is definitely an FA Mod, but I don't know how close you are to that person, how much you talk to them, or whether you consider him or her to be a friend. The person is on your friends list, but you have a very large one. :p I definitely believe that you and your friends have been misled and manipulated by a very dishonest person among your... acquaintances at least, if not close friends.
Then tell me who it is. Because from what you've said here, for the life of me, I cannot guess. If you want to offlist it to me, feel free. But if you know there's a viper in my yard, don't you owe a little duty to me to tell me where it is, before I walk out and get nipped again?
To be honest, this week, I think it's even less likely that Sporkify is on my friends list, because there wasn't *anything* on F_W about the whole Escape from Azkaban thing - and anyone on my flist could've easily taken my comments about it from Monday and utilized it in an F_W post, without even citing to me.
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I did not post anywhere about this in the last week or May or the first week of June. I was huge, I was moving, I could hardly sit at a computer and as of June 1, I was in the hospital until the 4th. So no, not me.
But there are some very important reasons why they were not believed - in large part because (as I rereada lot of things in the last 10 days) they were claiming that Fermatojam did not exist. However, msscribe had a police report regarding his harrassment of her, and furthermore, had been in contact with his college (who were his ISP) about their disciplining him. And that resonated with a number of people who had, a year before, been involved in reporting Sinead, who'd been involved in the deletion of the HPfGU lists, to her university, and the process they engaged in to discipline her as both her school and her ISP. So when the cornerstone of the GT claims was that Fermatojam didn't exist, in contrast to the third party corroroboration that he did exist, it was impossible to believe their claims.
It's sort of the flip side of what had happened with Jeff. I provided Imogen with a fax from Southwest Bell, including the name and contact phone number of the SWBell attorney who sent the "you are in violation of our ToU" letter to Jeff, and she, as I understand it, told the other GT admins that the letter was a fraud, and that we (cassie, Stacey and I) had fabricated evidence. And Chryslin posted the following things publicly in December, 2001:
Not a single piece of evidence she has is valid...
IPs can easily be changed, though. But when you're not doing anything illegal, who cares if IPs match.
Yes, but Cassandra has been telling as many people as she can that the police have the information and that the alleged stalker is facing jail time. Since no police reports were even filed, it's a simple fact that they do NOT have any information regarding this. So as you can plainly see, that's yet more proof that Cassandra has to lie about the incidents in order to maintain interest.
So here's a situation where sixteen or so months before, the GT admins said amongst their friends that IP addresses were bullshit, that a police report is prima facie evidence that Something Bad happened, etc. And last May/June they were saying that an anonymizer was evidentiary, and that IP addresses were unspoofable, etc.
With Jeff, we didn't rely on *any* of the IP information as declaratory when we were dealing with the GT admins via Imogen; they were informative, but the real "sinkers" were Jeff's admission to Arabella and the letter from SWBell. My after-the-fact take on this is that if there really was something there, they should've reported msscribe to her ISP, who would've been able to investigate and see if the logs they automatically generate really meshed with what the GT admins were claiming. They didn't, as zorac's analysis shows here. There was no police report, there was no report to anyone with the ability to independently investigate anything. And that's at least part of why they weren't believed.
It may sound "mean" - to me it just feels ironic.
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I think that they hoped that people like you would examine the evidence they offered and compare it with your own IP records, from your website and your LJ's, to see if it was credible. Instead, they were, as they saw it, threatened with a libel suit by FA administrators.
See above re the evidence; I'm not sure how much examining they thought I could do at that point, seriously, btw. And Amy's post was very clearly made on her own behalf, not on behalf of FA. What did they expect, a suit from *FA*? On what grounds? It's just such a leap of logic from Amy's analysis to "FA is threatening to sue us."
Now, I was not getting Help Desk emails at the time, and we dont' archive that far back, so I don't know if Carissa's claim that she was going to email FA about this is actually true, or if she decided not to do so. All I know is, I didn't see or answer anything, but I trust Simon to have looked at the IP info and zorac's analysis, and drawn the reasonable conclusions.
A day or two later, the person they believed was responsible for deliberately running a successful smear campaign against them and orchestrating a huge outpouring of hatred toward them WAS MADE A MOD AT FICTION ALLEY. This person was named as a mod after only thirty-one posts, twenty-one of which simply pimped her own fics. It was definitely perceived by GTers (and by me, for that matter) that she was so named in support of her claims of being libelled by GT, and I'm sure they thought that you, personally, were involved in the appointment.
Actually, yes, I was, in April. But here's the thing - given that Dionne was actually harrassed by Fermatojam, and that she actually didn't do the various things claimed by GT on the GT forums, what reason would we have for not bringing her on as a mod? She initially was just coming aboard to fill in for aome, who was also about to go on "baby leave" (she went to China in June to adopt a baby) and has been a "fill in" mod ever since. FA does bring people onto the modding/coding/art-approving squad even where they don't have a huge number of posts, if they demonstrate a particular skill, but in this case, msscribe was brought on because lissinthecity brought it to the attention of Simon and myself that she had the time to fill in for aome when we needed the help, and that lissinthecity would be able to get her trained so aome and I could focus on baby-things.
Let me also note that we did not know, at that point, that she had any involvement with the Hidden Tower stuff, and praetorianguard told her that she had to quit the role-playing if she wanted to stay on Team FA. So she quit. We've asked other people similar things before - to leave anti-plebes, for example - and they've always done so.
Fandom Bitches.
Yeah. Stacey's project. If you notice, Stacey isn't an FA mod anymore, and hasn't been since August, 2002. I haven't spoken to her in almost two years. She did a lot of things I didn't agree with, but I did believe her when she said that FB was created to be mean to everyone, including FA. They certainly were mean enough to FA that Fandom Wankers pointed it out regularly.
The old-GTers don't necessarily know your shipping opinions or the rest of your personality because their main contact with you comes ONLY when you make a comment about them at FA or on Fandom Wank.
Then it's too bad that they ignore my LJ entirely, or my profile on FA, or, in fact, what FA actually hosts. I can't force them to read anything, or pay attention to anything, but I can point things out when they get them dead wrong, like last fall when kvader said that HPfGU (which I'd quit by then anyway) was an H/Hr shipping site run by Penny. My first reaction to that was ...talk about behind the times...
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