Statement regarding Marisa the Magician (aka Marisa Kirisame)

[DrPyspy]

He "exhausted his options"? He said nothing to me after mid March and never once sought to ask me anything about the logs he showed in the video. Just put it all out there, and unfriended me on Discord at some point, which meant I had no option to speak privately with him. Not even an "is this true?"

This would be a fantastic question to let him answer. I recommend figuring out a way to let him answer that.

[Kinsie]

Despite the circumstances, I do want to say that I appreciate both yours and Cali's posts, as I respect both of you admitting to the faults of the team and the fact that you both express a desire to deal with the repercussions of this whole situation.

Seconded. Cali seems to have a pretty good recognition on the problems at hand, but doesn't seem certain about how to go about handling them. That's where this thread can bridge the gap.

Just put it all out there, and unfriended me on Discord at some point, which meant I had no option to speak privately with him.

Are you sure it was him specifically unfriending you, or some other permissions-based thing? Discord is weird and does weird things, and I've had people fall out of communication for all sorts of reasons. Some of which were probably not even my fault!

[Rachael]

Respect goes both ways; you have shown many people involved in this no respect, so forgive me if I am not jumping at the chance to trust your intentions.

I never asked you to trust me. You wanted an explanation - you got it.

And I am not demanding respect. I am saying if you do respect me, I'll respect you back. The people involved who got shown no respect, have themselves shown none, most of which were not even as a result of my own actions, but of their own.

I am also saying that if you don't want to respect me, that if you don't want to come at me in good faith about the situation, and if you've already made your mind up about me ----- there's the door. --->

You're right. I don't want to deal with this. And to be quite frank, you have no right to DEMAND of me that I do. I've given what I can, and nothing I do ever will be good enough for some people. That's too bad. It sucks. But frankly, I am too old to care, I am way *way* past the age of high school drama, especially with all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit that led up to this.

You get what you give. Sure, I got what I gave too. But - it's really just as simple as that. Don't like it? That's all you're getting.

[Kinsie]

I never asked you to trust me. You wanted an explanation - you got it.

And I am not demanding respect. I am saying if you do respect me, I'll respect you back. The people involved who got shown no respect, have themselves shown none, most of which were not even as a result of my own actions, but of their own.

I am also saying that if you don't want to respect me, that if you don't want to come at me in good faith about the situation, and if you've already made your mind up about me ----- there's the door. --->

You're right. I don't want to deal with this. And to be quite frank, you have no right to DEMAND of me that I do. I've given what I can, and nothing I do ever will be good enough for some people. That's too bad. It sucks. But frankly, I am too old to care, I am way *way* past the age of high school drama, especially with all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit that led up to this.

You get what you give. Sure, I got what I gave too. But - it's really just as simple as that. Don't like it? That's all you're getting.

I am saying this with all due respect - posts like this are inflaming this situation and increasing the tension just as people are settling down into engaging as equals. Please, let Weasel and Cali take the wheel on this one. It'll make things go a lot easier.

[Accensus]

Then we are done. I am not expecting to be coddled, but if all I am going to get is more accusations for everything I say, then what's the point? You want answers. You have one hell of a way to go about "getting" them, one that is tried and proven never to work. And then you expect me to break the "cycle"? I'm sorry, I have better things to do with my time. I'm certainly not going to coddle a bunch of people who have already dead-set in their minds that I am the evil person. You have an axe to grind? Go grind it. When you want to talk, I'll be here.

I do.

Honestly I was here to troll because I don't care about this account anymore and this is a spectacular shitshow, but given your responses so far I'll at least mount a proper last post before I get sent to Banhalla along with my finely-ground axe.

You, Rachael, are, without doubt, the most delusional person I have ever met in my life. What you are doing right now is the exact same shit you did a decade ago in Skulltag. Oh yeah, I've seen the IRC chats. I've seen the forum posts. Every time someone lit a match under your ass you deflected with "Thanks, bye!" or "WE OWE YOU NOTHING". And you are doing it again. Because of course you would. "Screw you guys, I'm going home" is a totally viable strategy as it leaves your opponents nobody to debate with.

But you already know that, don't you? So I am going to say what I wish the ghosts of great forum legends would have said when things started getting progressively worse, before they fucked off from the forums, for better or worse: you are an absolute cancer on this community and your "my way or the highway" mindset has made a mess of this forum and slowly influenced other staff members to think alike. Stop thinking you're hot shit for having a red name. This is a forum for a 30 year old game, and particularly a forum for an old man these days who just wants to develop his source port, yet here you are pretending you're the senate, talking to everyone like we're some peasants wanting to talk to the benevolent king. Get the fuck out of here and stop poisoning this place with your dictatorship. This forum will not get better until the driving mindset behind it improves, but you have your head so far up your own ass and refuse to ever acknowledge that maybe you just suck as a moderator and can't (and shouldn't) handle power. Too bad you will never admit it or improve because you have the self-awareness of a brick. Go be a blight somewhere else.

God I wish people could vote your ass out. Too bad there's nobody else that I know of who is both competent and willing enough left to take care of the administrative needs of the forum. Someone who isn't clinically insane, too, I forgot to mention.

[wildweasel]

Problems aren't going to get solved here if both sides aren't willing to actually figure out how to solve them. Just saying.

[DrPyspy]

I never asked you to trust me. You wanted an explanation - you got it.

And I am not demanding respect. I am saying if you do respect me, I'll respect you back. The people involved who got shown no respect, have themselves shown none, most of which were not even as a result of my own actions, but of their own.

I am also saying that if you don't want to respect me, that if you don't want to come at me in good faith about the situation, and if you've already made your mind up about me ----- there's the door. --->

I for one would prefer to respect the moderation team in charge of ensuring this is a safe place for people to interact in. The moderation team has failed, and you are consistently making the choice to avoid confrontation on this. You cannot avoid taking the responsibility of this as an administrator. This is understandably a stressful situation, but you cannot keep avoiding it.

You're right. I don't want to deal with this. And to be quite frank, you have no right to DEMAND of me that I do. I've given what I can, and nothing I do ever will be good enough for some people. That's too bad. It sucks. But frankly, I am too old to care, I am way *way* past the age of high school drama, especially with all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit that led up to this.

You are mistaken. This is not high school drama. This is about managing a major community responsibly and properly protecting their members. If you are willing to disregard the community as kids fooling around in the hall, then you are woefully misguided. You need to properly see this situation for what it is.

You get what you give. Sure, I got what I gave too. But - it's really just as simple as that. Don't like it? That's all you're getting.

I would hope that you would take this as seriously as the other members of your mod team seem to be doing. This is the end of the line; you cannot ignore the fact that you and your team disregarded accusers as people to be burned and that you continue to reduce the people trying to speak out about it as just people who want to cause drama. People speaking out against this blatant disregard for the community is inherently going to be dramatic; I'm sorry if it is uncomfortable, but you're going to have to face it at some point. Please, understand what is happening. Put away your pride for just one moment.

[Eric_]

I have a lot more words of my own for this topic, but first, I'm forwarding this message from TerminusEst13, whose account is deactivated:

---

Hi, I'm TerminusEst13. You might know me on the internet as TerminusEst13. I've made a few projects. And I've handled positive and negative reception to a lot of my projects.
A while back, I stepped away from the Doom community, outside of a few outlets.

I'm not going to claim to be a paragon of moral virtue. That's because, well, I'm not! I grew up on 4chan, trawled 8chan for a good while, and I've said (and done) some pretty naughty things. But during my time here, I've tried to promote a message of creativity. Making things is fun, making things can be *easy*. Creativity can be really rewarding, and people should embrace mistakes and flaws.
And even now, I still think it can be! But boy howdy, have I learned a lot about community collaboration since then.

This isn't just about Marisa, and you keep making it about Marisa. There's a lot that happened with Marisa. But there's more to it. It's about how MODERATORS WILL NEVER HELP YOU. ONLY TRUST YOUR FISTS.

I'm not going to mince words. This community has scarred me.
People have thrown death threats at me because of my work. People have attempted to publicly campaign against me. People have given me shit because I've taken steps to remove myself from community bullshit. And moderative response has frequently been apathetic at best, because of a long-standing desire to not want to rock the boat by banning contributors.
Now, I'm not going to say I don't deserve any of the flak I've gotten--like I said, I've been naughty sometimes. Sometimes I just danced too close to the flames and got burned. The tipping point, however, was when sexual boundaries were crossed.
One person kept calling me "cutie", being openly affectionate with me in public, she would try to flirt with me on Twitch, even after I asked her to stop, and even would post on Twitter drawings of my avatar that they would fire a heart gun at. (It was Marisa)
Another person would coerce me into drawing porn for him. He would talk at great length about how much he wants to do handholding with my chars, that he wants to do gentle lovey-dovey things with my chars, and tell me about how wonderful it would be to feel the warm touch of a woman and how lonely he was and etc etc (It was SmashBroPlusB)

When I tried to contact mods, one response burned into my mind was (paraphrased) "oh, they're just horny and they like you". I was told I should be flattered, and if it really bothered me that I should step aside and let other people get the spotlight.
Now I don't have any caps or logs to corroborate this. Take this with a mountain of fucking salt. Both of them have since deleted their Twitters, and any conversations with the mod team have been lost to the aether. But you know what? If you want me to step aside, I'm fine with that. I have my stream and my friend group. I want to be creative, first and foremost, and I don't need you for that. I've cut myself off and I do my own thing now.

There's a strange idea among moderation that action can only be taken if someone demonstrates clearly, without any wiggle room, that they are being malicious.
It's more simple than that. If someone breaks the rules, you punish them. Punishing someone for breaking the rules does not have to be a declaration that they are a true villain, it is an acknowledgement that you broke the rules! Moderative action cannot wait for true villains to rear their heads, because very few people are true villains. Even as someone whose optimism was tested on a nearly daily basis, you would be hard-pressed for me to point out people who are evil and cannot change.

Fandom is a wonderful thing, but also a terrifying thing. "I like thing, too!" is a great way to meet people, but it's not a good foundation for establishing a long-term social circle. Mass amounts of people are not healthy to constantly deal with, and being a fan of someone's work is not the same as being a friend to someone.
Being a content creator/developer in recent years feels more and more like a thankless job, and my ethos has certainly gotten REAL fucking tested more often than not, lately. But still, I've never stopped smiling. Creativity deserves to be celebrated, and fledgling modders deserve to be supported. Cringe culture isn't dead, it's an aesthetic.

And I still hold true to it. Making things CAN be fun.
It's just not always.

Now, my words.
The utter incompetence of every member of staff in this matter is beyond belief. The opening post is nothing but things you all thought we wanted to hear, and it completely missed the mark. You're so out of touch you thought that Marisa's guilt was of any relevance, and that throwing her under the bus would save your own asses. That's all you've been doing this entire time - covering your asses. You banned Marisa not because you believed the accusations held any weight or out of any obligation for the safety of your community, but because you thought it'd save face under the hypothetical that someone asked about it. You banned nax and Marcaek from your backroom server (which was intended for cross-community collaboration - fine collaboration there) because they brought up valid concerns about the discussions to people they thought they could trust. You banned Marty for bringing these events to light, and now, weasel, you're lying that you've had no means of contacting him when you were in Blue Vertigo up until the day the video was posted. Why would any of these individuals have the slightest trust for you now? Why would anyone who has witnessed these events have any trust for you? You show no trust or respect for your oldest users or any users at all outside of your immediate friend circle, who get free reign to engage in the flame fanning that normal users are being threatened with bans for. This isn't 2012 anymore - nobody has to take this shit. What does this forum offer anyone now? That's what you need to realize, understand, and find a solution to. Hyperaggressive moderation doesn't work if people have no reason to tolerate it. They're just going to leave and you'll be kings of the wasteland, as you have been for the past seven years.

[Caligari87]

I see this a lot in these discussions; a kind of constant push to bring everyone to the table and force them to listen. But that's usually as far as it goes. And it usually burns out because one side or the other continues to avoid it, and we kick the can down the road.

Well, I'm at the table and I'm actively listening. I want to make things better. I'm tired of sitting around and waiting for a consensus. That said, I'm also not the best at this kind of thing. I'm a middle-age dude who's managed to coast most of his life, and honestly this position kinda fell into my lap for various reasons. I have no training to be a moderator, besides several years of beating my head against the brick wall of reddit. I've made a lot of mistakes and I'll probably continue to make them. But I trust that this community, as old and seasoned as it is, can have a semblance of sanity and recover from this.

Tell me what would help, people. Be specific. I can't promise I'll be able to deliver, but I'm willing to go to bat for this community.

[Eric_]

My specific problem with your approach to this situation, Cali, is that you wanted to stay out of it at first, but later felt compelled to contribute anyway, which resulted in poorly-planned actions and got you front and center in Marty's video. I feel that if you want to stay out of a situation, you should - and be allowed to stay out of it. If the people above you were pressuring you to participate despite your stated discomfort, directly or not, that's a major problem with the moderation culture. Forcing people's hands on situations they're not comfortable dealing with will never yield good results.

[Caligari87]

No one pressured me into it. If anything, I was encouraged to stay out of it for my own sanity.

Well, I stepped into it (probably because I have a tendency to be a self-destructive meddler). I probably made some grave missteps while doing so.

So, I'm here now. I'm admitting the mistakes and trying to do better. Everyone's free to take that at face value or not, but it's what I'm offering.

EDIT: And if for some reason what I'm putting down isn't trusted, I'd be very much interested what level of atonement is being requested here.

[Dr_Cosmobyte]

I guess we would like EVERY people in staff to be like you now Cali, and that's not what is happening.

[Tapwave]

Tell me what would help, people. Be specific. I can't promise I'll be able to deliver, but I'm willing to go to bat for this community.

This is my personal opinion and anyone is able to tell me I'm wrong. What I feel would be best is as follows:

• Rachel needs to step down from any moderation capacity. We are not telling her to leave Zdoom forever. We are telling her to stop engaging in a function that she is not suited for, and clearly causes her a lot of grief. A lot of people, which I'm sure includes herself, will enjoy great relief if she can be allowed to focus on things she is clearly skilled at. Webmaster stuff, development, all that stuff she has skills that have been consistently been of use to the community.

• Unban Marty and TTA. It's nonsense to pretend they are bad faith actors and will forever be a blight on the site. It'll also be a way to show you accept mistakes and are willing to build back those bridges.

• An actual apology on this issue would be great. Not something huge and well written. Just Rachael saying "Okay. I messed up. I sorry. I'll do my best to change" is enough. A lot of us are incensed by her unwillingness to accept any blame and deflecting the issue. This would show she has -some- ability to overcome that.

• Make Candice step down. A lot of us believe she is purely here due to nepotism and is not someone we consider a mature pillar of our community. Again, she doesn't have to leave permanently, but she definitely should not have been made a moderator. Instead, have an actual moderator recruiting campaign. Hold a vote. Actively engage your community on those matters, because many of us are convinced that the current moderator circle is entirely there on Rachael's behalf.

[SadCack]

Rachael wrote:
> You're right. I don't want to deal with this. And to be quite frank, you have no
> right to DEMAND of me that I do. I've given what I can, and nothing I do ever will be
> good enough for some people. That's too bad. It sucks. But frankly, I am too old to
> care, I am way *way* past the age of high school drama, especially with all the
> cloak-and-dagger bullshit that led up to this.


Rachael, you are a moderator of one of the largest Doom forums online, you HAVE to deal with this. The question isn't IF you will handle the situation but HOW. Is this drama obnoxious, tiring, and generally unrelated to Doom? Yep, and that sucks. However, as a leading moderator of this site it is your responsibility to manage the community and its problems. You already know infinitely more about any of this than I, someone who has only very recently joined the community. I can appreciate the difficulty of the situation that you find yourself in, I do not envy you. That doesn't change the fact that the way you are acting in this thread comes off as highly unprofessional, needlessly aggressive, and generally is just bad optics. The only advice that I can give you is to reread your posts before you make them, consider if the example you set is that of a proper community leader, and only make public statements like this if they benefit the community at large.
I honestly wish you luck in dealing with this shitstorm, and I hope that the ZDoom leadership can learn from this and grow into a more open, more trustworthy institution.

[wildweasel]

Forcing people's hands on situations they're not comfortable dealing with will never yield good results.

Which leads me to wonder how many people, in this thread or in #offtopic on Discord last night, have ever stopped to wonder how my staff and I feel about this. From my perspective, this should have ceased being a problem back in March, but it keeps coming back up. The reason I've even contributed to making this statement, this thread, is because I feel like my hand has been forced, and my staff and I are now backed into a corner. Realistically, most people are not going to just give up and lie down in a situation like that.