Best posts made by Bessarion

When a trans player feels safe apping a trans character on your game.

I wasn’t going to reply, but I also don’t want to be spun up into another forum bogeyman.

I wasn’t lying about who I was. I was existing anonymously. There is a difference. Lying is what I did when I was dysregulated, reactive, and poorly medicated six months ago. I chose a new handle when I started my new game because I wanted to run a great game and prove that I’ve done the work and that I’m actually working on the behaviors that have hurt people and made them uncomfortable in the past without people assuming the worst of me. I think anyone on that game will be able to say that my behavior and gamerunning style speak for themselves.

I am not denying most of what you folks have said. You had interacted with me during some times when I had poor emotional regulation, improper medication, bad ideas about what made good RP, and my trauma and anxiety (yes, I am Jewish, and I have had to deal with Christmas-related trauma and I am now aware of how to deal with that) were activating all over the place and splashing onto those around me. I’m not going to get into the specifics of how and why I was behaving the way I was on SR because it really doesn’t matter, but I am not proud of the way I behaved back then, and I am not proud of the way I behaved in September.

I wasn’t seeking any of you out and lying about who I was to get close to you. I wasn’t going out of my way to interact with any of you. I was minding my own business. Running my game. Tried to join Shattered to play with some of my friends who were there. If I interacted with any of you, it was peripherally and neutrally in a public scene. I wasn’t bothering any of you, and believe me, those of you who don’t like me? I want to interact with you as little as you want to interact with me.

You all said to do better. So I got help and I was doing better. I only joined this forum to promote my game, against my better judgment. I never should have engaged or posted at all beyond my game ad. That’s on me. I guess I have a distinctive writing style.

All I wanted to do was run my dumb little worm zombie game and play magic flying ponies with my friends and avoid people with whom I had bad blood. I actually have mended a lot of fences over on my game and it’s been really good for me and has given me a lot of perspective.

@farfalla was right. None of you are obligated to be my learning experience. That’s why I was doing my own thing and trying to let my work and behavior speak for me.

Other people make new handles or choose not to link for various reasons, including people who are legitimate bad actors. I think I understand how this must look, given the trauma that all of us have with fuckery in this hobby. I’m not denying that I have caused harm, but I am not a bad actor. I am someone whose mental illness has become other people’s problems in the past, which was not okay and I have been learning the skills to make sure that doesn’t happen again in any of my social interactions, online or off. I am also someone who you guys find annoying. Maybe I got a little excited and chatty on channel sometimes. I am still learning how much is okay and how much is annoying. That’s something I still need to work on, and I am actively learning how to manage that. As an autistic woman who didn’t get diagnosed until her thirties, there’s a lot of things I am still working on.

I own my behavior and I think the work that I’ve done on 6ix Remains and wherever else is showing that I am making a good faith effort to not be the kind of person I don’t want to be.

So if you are on my game and want to leave, that’s fine. I am not bothering any of you, other than posting in the same threads as you on this forum. I’d appreciate if you’d do me the same courtesy of leaving me alone as well, like I was trying very hard to do for you folks.

https://6ixremains.thecryingbeard.com/

Welcome to Hogtown, where the brain worms are not metaphorical.

A band of survivors trying to eke out an existence in a city shut off from the rest of the world, contending with formerly-human worm-infested husks, other bands of survivors, supply shortages, and the elements. Will you be one of the few who remains?

6ix Remains is a story of community-building and survival. It is a story of difficult decisions, ingenuity, and finding strength and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. A story about ordinary people who become extraordinary in extraordinary circumstances.

Just don’t piss off the librarians. They’re armed.

Right now, we are in the leadup to the official Alpha opening. We’re open for CG, RP, low-key events (both staff- and player-run), and testing out ideas, themes, and implementation, with the official plot launch planned in about a month. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions!

I know that the game attracted at least one known problem player from past WoD games and I’m pissed that people couldn’t just… not. It was a great game with a lot of potential.

Jesus fuck. This person deserves to be named, shamed, and yeeted into the fucking sun. Twice.

@Cobalt, I am so sorry you had to read this again to redact this horrific hell-log.

@L-B-Heuschkel I think a known good game-runner is also a factor. Cobalt is absolutely a huge part of why The Pack blew up overnight, and Tat is absolutely a huge part of why her new game got to capacity so quickly. I think another factor is game theme. If there’s a gap in the ‘market’ that people are jonesing for and they see a new game where they can play that stuff, they’re going to roll on in. Not saying that Testament is a schlub! He’s a good guy who runs a good game, and there is also that roll of the proverbial dice and the capricious whims of MUers to contend with.

@Cobalt I hate it when grunt grunt sweat dudes swing their dicks around.

@bear_necessities I think that in general, we are a fairly neurodivergent bunch and other forms of neurodivergence that don’t jive with ours can make us edgy and uncomfortable and it’s easy to interpret earnest blundering for manipulation or bad actors. Not that there aren’t neurodivergent manipulative people or bad actors – it’s definitely not an excuse for that behavior, but it’s also easy to confuse the two sometimes.

I mean, I’d rather talk about how Cujo fucked Ektor over until he left the game. Ektor is a genuinely good guy, calm and stable and hard to piss off, just a frankly amazing human who ran all of the Resistance combat stuff. I left before he did and I don’t have the full story there, but you’ve got to be a special kind of asshole or stupid to alienate the dude who is literally doing half of your job.

@Pax said in Why is Pack closing?:

@GF Eh. I like WoD but it definitely brings out the weirdos. It’s usually the vampires being edgelords but say that too loudly and suddenly it’s a competition.

With some people, everything with shifters becomes a sex thing and they go all Shang. This isn’t TS-shaming. This is saying that for these people, their character and their RP all start to center around their kinks, and they think this is what everyone else is there for, too.

@Narson It was one of a couple of places where I advertised my game. I advertised it here because it’s the forum with the most activity and the most traffic. There are more people who post here than the ones who have a personal issue with me, and I’ve gotten some great players that way. Maybe it was a bad move. It probably was.

When I was writing in the second person, I wasn’t speaking to everyone. I was speaking to the individuals who have issues with me, and I am not painting myself as an innocent maligned victim. I behaved very poorly, and they are well within their rights to not want to interact with me. If it ever happened that someone I knew didn’t want to interact with me made a character on my game, my plan was to just give them the same shot as anyone else and interact neutrally and fairly and only when necessary. This isn’t because I am dying to play with them, but out of fear that they wouldn’t respect my privacy if I told them who I was. I was scared of this, but it’s a small community and I figured I could just live and let live and run plot and not be their friend and just let them do their thing. I wasn’t expecting to get any traction at all, honestly, and I’m proud of the safe, friendly, cooperative culture we have been building. I’m worried that I’m going to lose this all now.

I feel like it’s damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Cultist Simulator is both amazing and awful for folks with ADHD brains.

Loads of spinning plates, combinations of things to remember, different things on different timers and different things to manage… and there’s also never a good spot to pause and hyperfocus means that whoops, it’s been four hours. Definitely do NOT play before bed, but it’s awesome if you need to kill some time.

@bear_necessities Agreed. He is a person with cognitive and developmental disabilities who lives in a group home (not telling tales out of school here, he talks about it openly). He’s not the same as whoever had the rape fantasies – worst thing he ever did was have a cat-person droid that creeped people out, but I don’t think it was a sex thing. I’ve been coming across him for years now and all he does is behave in developmentally immature ways that put people off and sometimes gets upset in public, but I’ve never known him to be a sex pest. Granted, I know that there might be stuff out there that I’m not privy to, but in my experience, its his immaturity and inability to interpret social cues that creeps people out.

@IoleRae Yeah, that was my bad and it’s not cool. I genuinely thought they were mixing people up, and even if that was the case, I shouldn’t have said anything unless I knew for sure that they weren’t.

@KarmaBum And if I tried to even BREATHE as tek, I would have gotten roasted into the stratosphere. You know this to be true. I never would have been able to do anything anywhere without anxiety and fear that people would see the handle and remember me only for my worst days.

I’ve been mending a lot of fences and my stupid, naive plan was to run a great game and then be like, “See? I said I would do better and I did better.”

I wasn’t seeking you out. I wasn’t causing trouble. I wasn’t getting emotionally dysregulated and reacting to my brain’s funhouse mirror distortion of reality. I get now how this was triggering for you folks and I’m sorry that I caused this. Part of my autism is that I have a hard time anticipating how people will react to things, and I miscalculated.

I was just trying to do my thing in peace. I wasn’t going to bother you or your crew on Shattered. I was going to play with my friends who are there and tell my stories. I’m sorry that I made you uncomfortable when you realized who I was. I never, ever want to make anyone uncomfortable.

In the past, I had a bad habit of what my husband calls Being Angry On The Internet. I would spin myself up. I would lash out. I would do dumb shit.

I picked a new handle because I was afraid, and I was ashamed.

@KarmaBum I will. I just wanted to make clear that my intentions are good and that I don’t have anything to hide, and clarify this misunderstanding of my rule and how I perceived the tenor of my own actions. I was also afraid that if someone asks me a direct question and I don’t answer, I would start being accused of more duplicity and I was having a hard time navigating how to handle that.

@Pyrephox Yeah, I’m discovering that it’s less of a game and more of a fascinating hostage situation.

@Cornpopped THAT FACE

@icanbeyourmuse So much work for a game in which you can’t really do anything other than have tea parties and watch Bal and Nym play princess

@Testament I mean, it’s what I did with the one guy I’ve had to ban so far. He got a warning before I went to bed. I woke up to reported conversations that showed he had not even listened a little bit. YEET.

@hellfrog Yeah. I fucked up. I framed it as “me being the bigger person” when I was trying to navigate this, because the way I was thinking about it was this – you folks don’t know me from Adam. If I ran into you on the street, you’d have no idea. You don’t know me as a person. You do know the behaviors of mine that you have seen. I figured that if I wasn’t behaving that way and if I was not trying to buddy up to people who I knew didn’t like me, I was doing good.

I did not set out to be actively deceitful. That was not my intention. However, effects are effects regardless of intention, and I seem to have made people upset and uncomfortable with my actions. I am sincerely sorry.