#<- Not quite sure this warrants my analysis tag but whatever

[scrion7]

Ok, so I put March 7th and Dan Heng's chess game from that one cutscene onto a board and I have...many questions.

Why is the chess board inverted, so that the bottom right square is black not white? Did they just rotate the board or is Dan Heng setting up for the next game?

March, you hung that horse 2 different ways (Queen and Pawn can both take)

To save it, you... moved the king to protect it?? Even if that queen wasn't there that doesn't solve the problem! Knight > pawn, it's a horrible trade!

She's also getting mated in 2 moves after Dan takes the horse. One of those mates happens to be Kb1 (March's only legal move), Bf5+, Ka2 (only legal move), and... Pawn to b3 checkmate. Dan has an opportunity here to force checkmate via pawn, and I think that's hilarious.

Dan Heng was totally going easy on her. He's hasn't even bothered to castle!

It doesn't make any sense but it looks like Dan's got two black bishops?? I moved it to E7 so it makes sense but its actually on F7. How is it on F7? No one knows!

If you want to take a look at it yourself, the Chess.com code is 1r2k1nr/p1p1b1pp/8/8/1p3Pb1/2N5/2K4P/q7 b k - 0 1

[orchidbreezefc]

OKAY COOL I WAS ON THE FENCE ABOUT POSTING MY OWN EXPERIENCES IN THE KFAM DISCORD BECAUSE A POST ABOUT People Being Mean To Sage Specifically SEEMED KIND OF MASTURBATORY OR SELF-PITYING OR WHATEVER BUT IF WE REALLY ARE GOING TO STILL BE OUT HERE PUSHING THE This Server Is A Lovely Familial Community And Dissenters Are The Problem NARRATIVE EVEN NOW? HELL NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

obviously this is hard to be objective about. this stuff is a lot less concrete than my first post, a lot more based on vibes i got, which, yknow, is why it’s not in my first post. but if anyone identifies with this, if anyone sees their own experiences in this discord reflected in mine, then it’s going to be worth the worry i’m reading too much into things, or others thinking the same of me. if i can help anyone who felt like THEY were mistreated there and weren’t sure if they were reading too much into things, then. it’s worth it. especially since the M.O. in there was ‘everything’s fine and if not we’re going to MAKE IT FINE by silencing anyone who disagrees’.

a lot of talk has been done about the censorship (word used loosely, first amendment protects from the government not from the mods etc, definitely a specific suppression of dissenting ideas though) the mods have been doing--once more i suggest @kfam-tea for receipts and screenshots. not something i feel great about, but not something i have personal experience with, so i won't speak to it. see also my first post about my interactions with the creators. it touches on the dogpiling, which i'll go into more depth on in this post. you can find it [link: here].

so. the first thing in the official discord that tipped me off about the hivemind samethink phenomenon is that the whole place is distinctly frosty on the subject of samben. that’s a post all its own, one that follows through to numbers on ao3 and whatever, but i’m not here to make a ship manifesto. suffice it to say i got attached to the ship upon listening, inhaled the (suspiciously small) ao3 tag, and was stopped in my tracks at the discord server where any implication of such ship inclinations were met with silence and pointed changes of subject.

distinctly weird. distinctly unusual fandom behavior, that i couldnt even hint around shipping the two men whose incredibly profound relationship is literally the crux of the show, who have exchanged ‘i love you’s, one of whom is confirmed gay--all other romantic entanglements aside, because when have those stopped shippers? that was weird. i realize that's maybe a bit tinfoil hat of me. it could have been the goldfish-bowl big-brother-is-watching vibe from having creators in there, except, as i said, it carries to other sites.

anyway, much more concrete was when i spoke out about my thoughts on ben’s actions in ep68. again, enough there for another post, so tl;dr: he was doing his best, he’s a good guy and a good friend, but his actions DIRECTLY outed sammy to the WHOLE town, without allowing sammy to say the words himself. it was an accident, yes, but it had tangible, harmful consequences, and even accidental harm warrants apology. it should at least be... acknowledged. at some point. by the show OR the fandom. it's a disservice to ben himself to never get the chance to own up to it.

this was an unacceptable take. i tried breaching this topic and making my case twice, and got THOROUGHLY dogpiled both times. a dozen fans crawled out of the woodwork to argue heatedly, sometimes getting quite aggressive, sometimes toeing the line of outright hostility toward me personally. definitely some downright rude messages. not once did anybody speak up to defend my right to put forward my dissenting opinion, let alone SUPPORT my argument, god forbid. ben’s were the actions of a good friend, i was told. outing someone to their whole town without giving them the chance to say it on their own terms didn't qualify as harm at all, i was told, on account of ben's heart being in the right place.

still, the opinions being argued matter less than the attitudes and behaviors. people don't have to agree with me about that ep, i don't care. i do care about being given the right to, as a single person on my own, have space to make an argument without being shouted down by a dozen people. i do care about how it fit into a greater pattern of forbidding any criticism of the show, and ben in particular, who is a good friend and therefore all of his actions are good and harmless, who is our resident heterosexual unassailable paragon of purity. which might explain the samben problem--sammy/ron[/jack] was perfectly fine, even popular, but there was never a whisper of shipping ben with anyone but emily. they're Official. theyre The Perfect Couple. don't you dare challenge that (and for the most part, i didn’t dare. i quickly learned not to).

my [link: previous post] details kyle's response to these fun events, where he specifically went out of the way to follow me being shouted into silence (a result of me being driven to literal tears and shutting down rather than invite more argument) with a warm congratulations to everybody for their conduct in this discussion. because that's the kind of conversation kyle wants to specifically and explicitly praise and encourage, i guess.

anyway. this contributed to the growing sense over my time in the discord that people held a certain distaste for me but didn’t want to say anything direct. instead they talked around me, ignored me, immediately changed the subject from my messages, the whole while bestowing constant glowing compliments on each other and endlessly repeating saccharine sentiments about what a nice family type community they were, how grateful they were for the discord being such a positive space. i suppose that’s an easy impression to get when negativity is ruthlessly suppressed (and apparently outright censored nowadays) and instead of insults or, god forbid, communication with people with whom folks might take issue, they just (more or less) silently stonewall and cold shoulder them.

again, i could be misreading cues, being egocentric or tinfoil hat by reading this pattern into how i in particular was treated. either way, the fact that i was given the fandom friday shout out the week after KFAM live was definitely... strange. fishy, even. i was already mostly out the door at that point, had been for weeks--it was actually in my last few days speaking there period. i felt strangely guilty that they would dedicate a day to me when i didn’t like being there much and hardly spoke any longer. one thing’s for sure: my congratulations were fewer and more impersonal, perfunctory, and/or generic than other fans got (i kept a screenshot). i still have no idea what to make of that one, but there you have it.

p.s.: since vagues are in vogue now apparently, i might as well mention the person who's been accused of being A Problem In The Discord For A While Now, among nastier things, which definitely is not an effort to justify kyle's passive aggressive response to their untagged post which used the phrase 'death of the author', or kyle subsequently crying on twitter about death threats because apparently he couldn't be bothered to google a basic literary analysis term and thought if he was vague enough nobody would look into what was actually said. i guess he was right, if the hundreds of asspats and outcries against The Evils Of Podcast Fan Meanies were any indication.

i digress. i just wanted to testify that the fan in question was one of maybe three or four people on the server who consistently treated me nicely and acted like they liked me. and that another fan who claimed to be uncomfortable around death-of-the-author-person was the person who came the closest to being outright nasty to me when i expressed a critical opinion. make of that what you will i guess!

p.p.s.: if i never say anything more about this whole thing or the creators’ part in it, i do want to say for the record: noah james is fully exempt from all of this and remains absolutely wonderful and a whole treasure. like dont pedestalize male creators and assume them incapable of wrongdoing etc etc but i had an hour long midnight denny’s breakfast sitting across from him and he was nothing short of an angel the whole time. sweetest guy i’ve ever met. he hasn’t breathed a word about any of this drama. he may not even know it’s going on because he’s too busy being the most beautiful and talented man in america or something. i love you noah

[rlyehtaxidermist]

i remember before you said you wouldn't take down questionable content, but what about outright unarguable gross shit? would you be alright taking it down if undeniable evidence is found that op is shit?

Take down what from where?

Is this about that fanfic from a couple weeks ago? That’s about all I can think of which would prompt this.

Is there a reason you’re sending these to me specifically, rather than everyone else who reblogged it? I’m not sure why I warrant the special attention.

Also, “you said you wouldn’t take down questionable content” is a very loaded paraphrasing of what I said, bordering on outright fabrication. For the record, my exact response was

@the anon who inboxed me discourse for reblogging that RemiSato fic: I agree with some of your points, I disagree with others, I always tag ship content with pairing names in case people might not be comfortable with a given pair, and while I’m always willing to address people’s criticisms of my own work in detail, please take it up with the fic’s original author.

It’s a Friday night, I’ve been up since 7 AM, and I am no less busy than usual.

I do still mostly stand by “take it up with the fic’s original author”, but since you’ve sent me a second message I doubt you’re going to do that.

I’d do my whole analysis on what I liked about it (and the aspects which I feel justified the agreeably questionable decisions) but I just got done with two hours of proctoring and have all the mental acuity of your average roadkill. I’m not dodging you on purpose, you just have a very strange power of picking out the days when I am most exhausted.

If something is “outright unarguable gross shit” and it somehow made its way into a space over which I have total control, I would probably remove it, because something obviously gross to me won’t remain in my presence unless there is something actively preventing me from moving it.

As for “undeniable evidence that OP is shit”, my response would depend quite extensively on the evidence and circumstances. There’s certainly a lot of evidence that I’m shit, and it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve actively tried to better myself in what ways people have made me aware of. There’s probably a fair bit of Fuckwit Channer Me under the surface and I might not always notice when I’m being him. (Incidentally, if I am, please tell me. I don’t want to be that guy anymore, but you don’t just wake up one day and stop being a douchebag.)

Also, this discussion probably best had over any kind synchronous message system. Make a throwaway Discord account, point me at an IRC server, mail me a semaphore book and tell me what building to stand on, whatever.

You don’t have to message me from your main, I know well the virtues of anonymity, but frankly I’m not comfortable having a prolonged conversation which is entirely at your pace, where your statements are completely anonymous and my statements are completely public.