Why is Pack closing?
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So… this is very interesting to me for a few reasons. Mack had been running a behind the scenes smear campaign on myself and another person I RPed with a lot on the Pack since nearly the begining, having had multiple people message me privately to tell me, the last time was only last week. Totally untrue stuff as well, which I suspect made more than a few people avoid RPing with us.
To find this out about her, makes me realize she was trying to gaslight people into thinking we were horrible people while being one herself, and that’s just sad. I really hope I don’t run into her in another game, but if I do, I’ll be sure just to let her self-destruct, since it sounds like her MO.
Also, I commend Cobalt for how she handled everything on that game, totally understand why she needs to shut it down. No one should have to deal with that crap. The theme was never the problem, it was definitely a problem player.
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@Pink Making up wildly untrue shit to run whisper campaign against people she doesn’t like is definitely her standard operating procedure.
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@Cobalt what the fuck bro. I’m so sorry you had to deal with this.
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@Pink Macha? Being manipulative?
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@Cobalt said in Why is Pack closing?:
@Pyrephox The thing is, my theme files outright point out there is no alpha/beta/omega/whatever designation in this world. And I had reinforced that whenever anyone brought up theme questions of “but are scary predators more respected than those silly foxes?”.
But I think the idea of Alpha Wolf is too ingrained the zeitgeist to really be combatted. Or I just have too much going on RL to combat it.
It just tells me that if I want to do shapeshifter stuff, I either need to get off of my ass and write my own damned book or just do something small and invite only where people are vetted as they come in, rather than fling the doors open for any and all.
I would play on an invite game only of shifters types. My only real experience with shifter types are on places like Shang or WoD and everything I’ve experienced WoDwise in regards to shifters has been unpleasant so I shied from it. Either because they weren’t inclusive or people would tell me ‘Wolfblooded are just sex objects’.
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@KarmaBum said in Why is Pack closing?:
@GF Yeah, but you’re gonna find hungry people at IHOP.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey.
Gotta say, after being told before that the prior analogy was akin to “what were you wearing”, a well known form of rape apologia, by at least two different people, it’s damn disappointing to see it defended with “why were you in that neighborhood”, instead.
This isn’t okay. Creeps are in every genre, on every type of game and the only defense is to have a proactive admin team who players can come to with their problems. (Hats off to Cobalt for being just such an admin, who took quick, decisive action.)
Stop making it about the damn genre or theme, because I got sexually harassed by a 50 year old man when I was 15 on a goddamn G rated Sailor Moon game.
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@Adora said in Why is Pack closing?:
Gotta say, after being told before that the prior analogy was akin to “what were you wearing”, a well known form of rape apologia, by at least two different people, it’s damn disappointing to see it defended with “why were you in that neighborhood”, instead.
This isn’t okay.I agree with you. That’s not okay.
And it’s not what I said.
At no point have I or do I blame anyone for playing there, nor Cobalt for hosting it. I blame the creepers for creeping.
That they tend to use certain themes as cover for their creepiness? Sucks. But -
@Roz said in Why is Pack closing?:
there is value in examining what different themes might attract, so that people can be better armed and prepared to know what to keep an eye out for.
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@KarmaBum said in Why is Pack closing?:
It’s just the neighborhood.
You may not have said the exact words “why were you in that neighborhood” but I fail to see how what you said is any different.
“It’s just the neighborhood. If you go to that neighborhood bad things will happen.”
Sounds familiar.
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@Adora said in Why is Pack closing?:
Gotta say, after being told before that the prior analogy was akin to “what were you wearing”, a well known form of rape apologia, by at least two different people, it’s damn disappointing to see it defended with “why were you in that neighborhood”, instead.
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@Adora I apologize. That is not what I meant.
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There seems to me to be a concrete difference between:
“This theme attracts predators who use it to mask their behavior, let’s be aware of this; how can we alleviate that”
and
“This theme attracts predators so if you get predated while playing this theme it’s the theme’s fault”.
One is an OK thing to say, even constructive! The other isn’t. Conflating one for the other is tiresome, though.
Blaming the theme is pointless and reductive but it also wasn’t what Cobalt (or the people on this thread who agreed with her about it) was doing.
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@Adora None of this is victim blaming and absolutely no one has been anything but supportive of Cobalt. Who is this even in defense of, at this point? The theme itself?
Discussing the theme doesn’t mean it was Cobalt’s fault. It doesn’t mean Character X was at fault. It doesn’t mean creepers aren’t anywhere else. But pretending that there isn’t a problem in a specific place does mean that the problem isn’t going to get addressed.
Saying that there seems to be a lot of car crashes at a specific intersection doesn’t imply that everyone who has been in an accident there before was asking for one by driving there - and no one would suggest it does. It does mean that maybe we should look at why it’s happening so we can fix it and stop more people being harmed.
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This is an area where many of us are likely to have some strong reactions. And while I didn’t personally interpret what was said as victim blaming (at least, as intended), we can leave room for those who did. An apology was issued.
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@Cobalt
Whatever worked or didn’t work about The Pack, I really hope the experience wasn’t too discouraging for you. Like I said lots of posts back, it DID seem like a game a lot of players responded to in positive ways, and I am really impressed with how you responded to an atmosphere that you didn’t feel good about being the gamerunner of anymore, because that was obviously really hard and Unfun to deal with this directly. I think it’s always constructive to reflect on why something didn’t work, or didn’t work for you personally, or get across what you wanted to get across, but I hope that doesn’t mean it was as wholly negative experience because you are a gamerunner lots of people like and respect and it’d be awesome to see another project from you in the MUSH space when you were excited to do it. -
@KarmaBum I appreciate that it’s not what you meant, but I need to expand on this just a little.
The logic in your reply about IHOP seems to be directly saying Cobalt is at fault because just like IHOP exists to serve food to hungry people, the Pack exists to serve up other players to creeps, which is clearly not the case.
I believe when you say that was not your intent, and I appreciate the apology, but at this point in time we all need to be doing better with the language and analogies we choose, especially when the largest, longest running threads on this forum are about online habitual sexual predators and the people that enable them.
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@Adora Will you please stop? Targeting one person over semantics is not doing you any favors. You’ve made your point several times now. In the words of yourself: Do better.
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“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant”
“I know but let me explain why that’s what you meant anyway–”This is not productive discourse. The horse is dead. Leave it alone.
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@Pax So everyone else gets to chime in and tell me how wrong I am for interpreting it in a certain manner, and defend their friend in a loud chorus, but I’m expected to fall silent when exploring the subtext of the initial comment and explaining why I found it offensive and triggering as a rape and domestic abuse survivor.
Gotcha. Consider it dropped.
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@Adora can I just ask how your comment here…
@Adora said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:I’m not trying to be a downer but these guys aren’t the ones who introduced sex crimes to Star Wars.
You know how in the third movie there was a Twi’lek girl dancing and when she tried not to get manhandled by Jabba, he murdered her? And how Leia was in a metal bikini and strangled Jabba with his own chain?
Sex crimes have always been an unfortunate part of Star Wars, and especially in the expanded universe. Twi’lek society is literally based around slavery, especially selling Twi’lek girls to men, because human men find them exotic.
So absolutely blame these jackasses for glorifying it, but George Lucas introduced sex crimes to Star Wars a loooong time ago… which is why it attracts so many creepers.Is any different from what we are explaining above? Emphasis mine. This theme attracts creepers, there are creepers in this neighborhood, it’s all the same thing.
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@Pax said in Why is Pack closing?:
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant”
“I know but let me explain why that’s what you meant anyway–”I think this is an unfair characterization. Adora explicitly said in the post you’re replying to that she believes KarmaBum didn’t mean that analogy to be rape apologia. It’s the third sentence in.
