Trigger Warning: Sexual assault, victim blaming, and narcissism.

I was not going to “name and shame” because I didn’t really want to deal with the mega-freak out that will becoming my way. But that was cowardice on my part. So here we go:

A log was presented to me of Mackenzie ICly attempting to seduce another character that was high on drugs. This is sexual assault. Full stop. And it is against the rules of this game. Further more when told OOCly that sex wouldn’t be happening in character Mackenzie player posed a “joking” disappointment. Then after that, the scene that followed to the “next morning” was so full of gaslighting, victim blaming, and a classic narcissistic spiral that I was left deeply disturbed OOC.

She proceeded to roll dice to convince her victim, IC, that they had had sex after for a very large portion of the scene. Where she ICly berated and talked down to her victim. And yes, that was all IC, but given I clearly laid out in my policies that sexual assault RP is not acceptable it is not ok. And, further, I 100% guarantee that this player was not doing this with the OOC knowledge she was RPing out the gaslighting and abusive of a victim of potential sexual assault. It came across, very much, that she was OOCly upset she was told no for tinysex and so was going to punish the player who turned her down with nasty IC drama.

When told to leave IC she refused to do. and her final pose was so overwrought with narcissistic manipulation I legitimately had a flash back to abuse suffered by an RL ex-partner.

This was 100% the final straw. It is 100% RP I did not want to facilitate.

I don’t know what about the theme here drew this type of player, but no one should have to deal with this sort of BS. And if I’ve facilitated a theme that makes people think they can do this? I will not continue to facilitate it.

To continue to name and shame:

I have been told (by more than one person) that Mackenzie@Pack was Macha@MSB.

Could people just, like, not be creeps?

@Gasboy said in Coming Soon: The Pack an Ares Game:

@Cobalt That’s a bummer? What happened?

I’m closing the game because I have gotten tired of playing whack-a-mole with the bad actors in the community.

I am busy with RL that is true, but I had plans to jump start the game once I got moved into new house.

However, increasing number of complaints have been filed about numerous players-- not just one. That it became obvious to me that there is something in the theme itself that draws out a certain type of player.

And ngl, the final straw was something reported to me that was obscenely traumatic to read. To the point that I couldn’t facilitate a game where that type of shit went on, even in private scenes.

Tl;dr: I’m closing because the theme attracts creeps and I’m tired of bouncing them off the game one by one.

The whole part of “my experiences with Cobalt tell me she just wanted Isaac for herself” is hilarious because I had Isaac on my “to be watched” (and honestly should have just banned him) list.

But it feels like a reflection of Derp himself. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve likely done some mean girl shit over someone I wanted to RP with in the past. I started mushing when I was 17 (if you don’t count my brief stint on a MUCk at 13). I was also living with someone who groomed me and kept me isolated from any sort of social contact out of mushing.

But I’m not in that situation anymore, and I’ve had a lot of time to grow and heal and try to be a better person.

I don’t think Derp has ever really sat himself down and tried to improve himself. I can’t say that banning someone for getting too close to a potential TS pattern, but it’s telling he thinks that of a known woman game runner.

FWIW I got the game back up today. Thank you to Tat and Faraday (who I am not tagging so they don’t have to ride this roller coaster) for helping me figure out how to do that.

@KarmaBum No.

So, a person came to me and said “a group of us were talking and we were wondering if you would give us a copy of the db”

I said, sure with some conditions. I would need full transparency on who would be taking over so people would have time to opt out and have their data removed from the game.

Turns out the loudest voice in the group was Machakenzie. I said “yeah, no, I would just remove every single character, log, and player build before I let anyone have it if she’s involved” because I’m not about to let her have access to people’s ip.

I made a post on the game saying if someone wanted it, it’d be will be there would be some strings attached. And I’m not sure if posted this part or not but after discussing it on the ares discord came to the decision that it would be more work than I wanted to do to expunge the dB sufficiently to hand it over. So instead I would just help someone install my config files that don’t have anyone’s info on them onto their own game.

In the meantime, I got a message that Mackenzie was asking the original person about it to get an expunged version of the dB. At which point said person gave me a heads up and said “I don’t want to be in the middle of this anymore”.

This may make me seem like a heartless Bitch, but boy it would be nice if people would stop telling me they are going to go cry because of MUSH drama.

It evokes more of a desire to back away from the person telling me than sympathy. And I try to be kind to people OOCly.

But for fucks sake…

Meanwhile, Willow thinks she is a cat….

I appreciate the support from the community greatly. I feel terrible for Character X, because imagine sitting through this scene.

I’ve done that in the past, RP’d out scenes I wasn’t comfortable with because the other person was a) a friend I didn’t want to make mad at me, b) a staff member or staff member friend I didn’t want to make mad.

Woah, I took a nap for a couple of hours and the train rolled off the tracks like Charles was chasing them.

A couple of things:

1. Thank you again to everyone for the support. I appreciate it. It is nice to know that I wasn’t overreacting or being overly sensitive because of my own personal experiences.

2. This hasn’t put me off of running a game. It has, currently, put me off of running shapeshifter-centered games. I do have an idea for a new game that I’m idly workshopping the theme/setting for with friends and peeps in discord. But I’m moving in literally a matter of days, so I’m not really in the space to start actually doing the work to make it be something other than an idea in my head.

3. I do not believe anyone was blaming me for creepers being around because I opened a shapeshifter-centric game. I do, however, agree that there is something about shapeshifter-centric games that appeals to creepers. Most likely all the fiction out there where shapeshifters are primal, alpha, dominating creatures. I thought I had done enough to combat this when I wrote my theme files and that those sort of social hierarchies did not exist in my game world, but apparently I did not.

I’ve got health issues, yo. I won’t get into the nitty gritty but I’ve been fighting for years to get my pain levels down. I’m at the point now where I feel like more of a human being.

And god do I like myself better on my lexapro. Shit that used to make me red hot angry doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Between getting the meds right for the pain and the anxiety getting taken care of I’m in a way better place.

Now I just need to figure out how to get out of bed with my alarm instead of oversleeping all the time due to this damned autoimmune condition.

@STD Anymore alts and the governor is going to take away my keyboards!

Just the weaselly way he talked to you makes my skin crawl.

@icanbeyourmuse Yeah you have be careful with what books you pick up in omegaverse cause they can be easily problematic. Have you tried Kathryn Moon? Her Sweetverse is very queer friendly and doesn’t involve a lot of abuse— at least not where the lead falls in love with her abuser. Plus! She’s got two or three books with male omegas and at least one female alpha.

@Aria That’s fucking amazing! I know I’m just a person on the internet but I’m proud of you. That really rocks.

Hurt by Oliver Tree

My little sister showed me this while she was visiting and ugh, it’s hit me right in the gut.

I kinda really want an omegaverse/billionaires social game, but I don’t know how I would manage to keep creeps out.

I’ve been reading a lot of silly romance novels about stupid wealthy people and I just wanna swan around pretending I’m rich on a game where it won’t get looked down on because very one else is also pretending to be stupidly wealthy.

But I also want a game with lots of fun (but optional) coded systems that is just enough crunch to sink your teeth into.

@Roz Currently goes by Yossarian on discord. It is a guy I kicked off of The Pack, and apparently got banned from Bessarion’s game, because:

Step one: Kept talking about gun violence on public channel. (From the perspective of him being a badass LEO who was engaging in gun battles on Florida highways with criminals.)

Step two: When I asked him to stop talking about it, he moved to discord to tell me he was sorry but he just had to vent sometimes about his job in an anti gang task force in Miami.

Step three: The above led me to tell him not to contact me in discord again and only talk to me in game when he needed something.

Step four: I joined Bessarion’s game and as soon as I set my ares handle, he messaged me on discord to tell me if I wanted to RP sometime he was up for it! But meanwhile, he was just trying to be transparent that he was there! (While never actually telling me who he played.)

Step five: I reported the incident to Bess and she said “I’ll keep an eye on it”. And he immediately started blowing up on a third party about me until that person complained to Bess and he was removed from the game for bringing other people’s drama to her game instead of leaving it alone.

Step Six: I guess now will be telling everyone everywhere I am a terrible horrible person?

—

I don’t believe myself to be some pristine and beloved person of the hobby. I know I’ve had my fair share of blow ups where I was in the wrong and there’s plenty who don’t want anything to do with me and that’s fine— I try to avoid them out of respect.

But I just still find it hilarious he tried to tell someone who has known me all my adult life and has, I do not lie, helped shape the course of my life over the past 8ish years, that I would kill her game and she would be dragged down for knowing me.

Like, sir, she knows full well I have a short fuse and run off half cocked sometimes and am a massive flake.

More of a lol than a peeve but:

When attempting to get me fired from storytelling for a game— maybe make sure the game runner hasn’t known me for going on 20yrs and knows my strengths and faults way better than you and how to manage them?

@Snackness I do if it was a particularly good scene. But I also heart other people’s scenes when I enjoy reading them.