Liberation MUSH
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@Pavel You lose the parking spot, though. Them’s the breaks.
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Polk really has been the infected teeth in the blowjob that is Liberation, huh?
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The game is great - Sundance, very much a welcome presence. Polkadolt? A lot less of a welcome presence. I’ve seen better behavior at a gorilla orgy.
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@Roz said in Liberation MUSH:
remember that time someone shared this 2018 discord log on MSB two years ago where polk freaked out about someone taking issue with a transphobic joke? i do. it was one of the many highlights of the liberation thread over there wherein many people warned sundance about working with polk.
Similar to what someone said earlier in the thread:
Good to finally feel validated (especially after Sundance/others basically gave a similar excuse as previous game runners did for VASpider "they run things, help the server, edit the wiki, etc). But sucks at the cost.
Glad to hear that Polks childish tantrum didn’t ruin the game in a permanent way.
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@Roz that is so cringe it caused me physical pain.
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From my phone, so patience please.
I’ve lurked here for a bit but this whole situation has prompted me to make an account. This Polk situation surprises very few long time players. Many of us have brought up our concerns about Polk to Sundance many times. The last time he was demoted I know privately that some players expressed their concern that he “held the keys to the kingdom” and foresaw this exact thing going down.
The fact he has been banned from from pretty much every game out there for his behavior but was so staunchly defended by Sundance is a travesty really. Sundance is great for telling stories, and on a personal one on one level but it’s hard to ignore that they fostered and basically encouraged the behavior of Polk for so long by giving him a pass on his bad behavior. We’ve had many players leave because he was abusive to them in one form or another or leave because Sundance refused to acknowledge his toxicity.
On one hand I’m glad this happened. Polk is out. On the other hand, Im of course sympathetic to the players who use this game to unwind or as an outlet for difficulties in their life.
My hope is that Polk somehow doesn’t worm his way back into the game in any sort of position of power as clearly he simply can’t be trusted to be objective and cool headed.
Still, it looks like the game is recovering fairly soon, although Sundances reputation with some of us is already tarnished by their insistence in the past of standing by Polk regardless of how in the wrong he generally was and basically dismissing player concerns to keep her friend happy.
I’m not sure where the community goes after this. My guess is because of the lack of alternatives out there, most will close their mouths and go on as if nothing happened. We as a community have seen this go down before and chances are we’ll see it in the future. It’s a shitty situation for everyone involved especially the players.
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@SuspectHound it’s hard to blame Sundance for trying to catch a falling knife. After years of terrible staff leads that caused myself and many of my friends to leave MUSH for several years, the way Sundance runs things is a breath of fresh air and the way Liberation is set up is the main reason I’m back in the hobby at all.
I feel that the childish actions of one person is a hard lesson learned, not a weakness on Sundance’s part. She stepped up to get him out of the situation once and for all and made the right decision, and the destructive actions were 100% on Polk, no one else. It would have been fair to expect someone with such ties to the game to be an adult and hand it off responsibly, no matter what kind of personal problems between the two, but that is not what happened. Few of us can truly know what happened behind the scenes but I suspect that this was a slow burn of bad behavior that finally reached a peak.
One of the tenets of Liberation is to leave baggage from other games and situations behind, and she must have extended that to Polk. That he chose to prove everyone else right is his cross to bear. The game be better off for losing the short fuse.
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Regarding Sundance, In terms of flaws a person can have, being overly loyal to their friends is one I am prepared to give a lot of leeway for.
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I go to bed and wake up to this…
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Just want to lend my voice to those saying this isn’t surprising. For as many times that Polk’s behavior was made into public spectacle, or brought up to Sundance privately; there are probably twice as many incidents where people just decided to avoid him as best they could, not wanting to get dragged into exactly this sort of drama. So no matter what sort of gas lighting now goes on; or what sorts of apologies are made later (whether they are by Polk, on Polk’s behalf, or by someone to Polk to smooth things over) none of you are crazy for thinking this is bad behavior.
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I agree with Pacha, Sundance’s overarching theme has been putting drama from other games aside and it fostered a solid game for a long time. That Polk can’t even operate within an environment of blanket amnesty for past drama is on Polk, and literally no one else.
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Lol I mean. It’s not Sundance’s fault that Polk is an ass, but a person does bear some responsibility for who they give power on their game.
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I thought about this some more, and the whole idea that anyone other than Sundance had that level of control over the technical infrastructure of the game and wasn’t considered staff just seems ridiculous.
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@MisterBoring said in Liberation MUSH:
I thought about this some more, and the idea that anyone other than Sundance had that level of control over the technical infrastructure of the game and wasn’t considered staff just seems ridiculous.
I think the move to ask him to step down from a staff role and lose access prompted the meltdown and shutdown or whatever action Polk took.
If I’m reading the situation right, that is.
I don’t think it’s been said what prompted the desire to make that happen and what made him act in the manner he did instead of just stepping back and taking a beat to process how to move forward without causing all the chaos.
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He was staff - he ran WtA, but has never read any of the books and players complained until he was removed. He offered to take over Mage, then boosted a couple of players while ignoring everyone else, and players complained and… he got removed… and then he was sorta vaguely background staff, running his ‘PC’ (the father or son or something of his previous PC, whose entire purpose was to get revenge for that PC’s death) like it was a staff bit by gaslighting and lying to people.
And eventually I guess he was asked to fully step down and transfer control.
But the instigating event of his hissy fit was him being asked to step down from staff. So he definitely was staff.
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Didn’t Sundance make a whole scene about the game not having staff though?
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No?
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@MisterBoring No. It has staff. It just doesn’t have a lot of staff. Whereas most games this size would have dozens of people on staff, there is only a handful.
Reality is, yes, it could use more, but Sun likes to keep the narrative and it’s easier to do with a few hand-picked people.
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There was a lot of back and forth on the old MSB thread about who counted as “staff,” and the idea that Sundance didn’t consider “Directors” to be staff exactly, etc. It was mostly about semantics, tbh.
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