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many-but-one · 10 days ago

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So, our system spent a looooong fucking time trying to reblog a post by someone that goes by @system-junk-spam but after typing it out it became unrebloggable, and then upon restarting the app we found that either they spontaneously deleted their blog or they somehow blocked us while we were typing something up, despite us having never interacted with them before. That, or tumblr mobile just straight up sucks. Highly probable.

Anyway, we worked really hard on the post and still want to share our thoughts, so we’re gonna put them here. We may get eaten alive for this take, but we’ve learned to not care what others think of us. We are allowed to believe things differently than our followers do and that’s okay. Hate will not be tolerated on this post. If I see it, you are blocked.

This is our theories on how endogenic plurality can possibly exist. We’ve talked about this before but not in great detail. We are literally just gonna copy-paste our response because oh my god it took so long to type out and then transfer to our notes app because the tumblr app was messing up. To TLDR the OP’s post, they were asking for genuine examples of endogenic plurality that wasn’t just someone actually having a CDD and thinking they are endo.

—

So, for starters, I used to be anti-endo. Kind of a dick about it to be honest, but not overly hateful towards endos. I have a post explaining that situation, where I also came forward with explaining that when I was a teen I thought I was an endo because I didn't have trauma—except I did, I just didn't know it yet. I also used to do roleplay—though not as a system, for the record. I just had characters I made that I later realized were heavily based on real alters in my brain and it was that alter's way of expressing themselves before they could be known by the host part at the time. So to say I understand where you are coming from, I understand where you are coming from. I have been that person. I went hard anti-endo at first, but slowly as I've begun healing and deciding "I don't really care what people do in their lives and it's not up to me to police that" I have become what I consider "syscourse neutral" but "fine with endos, I just don't interact with the community much because I'm not endo." Mainly with the feeling of "live and let live" and "they're people deserving of respect too" driving that stance.

I start with all of that preamble because at the end of the day, whether endos "really exist" or not just…doesn't matter. They're not actually taking our resources, they're not seeking out DID specialists because most of them know they don't have DID, and the whole narrative of them "making a mockery of the disorder" is pandering to fake claimers, who are the ones who point and laugh at the disorder whether you are endo or not. Endos are not the enemies of DID systems here, fake claimers are. And whether endos exist or not, fake claimers will still fake claim people with DID no matter what.

If you make this post with the concern that people who say they are endo may actually have a CDD and that can be damaging to their healing long term (it was for me personally) or they may take longer to realize they have a CDD (happened to me), the thing is, they will eventually discover that they have a CDD if that's what they really have. You have all of these examples of people realizing they actually had a CDD because those people eventually realized that's what they had. No matter what, at some point in someone's life, if they have a CDD and the right support, they will eventually realize they have a CDD—even if they initially think they are endogenic.

To go on a personal tangent, it was actually a very good thing that I thought I was endo for so long and got completely alienated from the entire CDD community because if I had discovered I had a CDD at the time, that could have had catastrophic consequences to my safety. When I finally started questioning the system thing again my first year of college, I not only nearly ended my life multiple times (other parts attempting), but I also ended up returning to my abusers and getting hurt again (callback programming, l'm a RAMCOA system). If I had discovered that as a teen? It could have been much worse than it was when I was an adult. I could have been retrafficked if I went back, rather than just reprogrammed and sent on my way, because I was still young enough to be “good product” as a teen, but as an adult they weren’t interested in my “service” anymore, they were more interested in making sure I remained programmed so I wouldn’t report them and they wouldn’t get in trouble. (Joke’s on them, I’m reporting them to the FBI. Suckers.)

My system finally allowed itself to be discovered in my final year of college because I was a mere month away from moving out with my then-fiancée at the time, who we believed could keep us safe should we display harmful behaviors. And we were right, even if she did end up being an abusive POS later. However, I still found out I was a CDD system and did get the help I needed. And even if the situation is not quite as dire for others, if someone who has a CDD believes they are endo, chances are, the system wants that for the time being. And who are we to try to disprove that endos exist just so people will be more accepting of themselves having a CDD? You said it yourself, that people knowing before they are ready can be damaging, so it's really not such a big deal whether or not endos are "real" if that's a way for a system to exist without having to hide while also still kind of "hiding" in a way.

HOWEVER! Now that I have become more open to the concept of endogenic plurality, I have put a lot of thought into "what if it really does exist? How would that happen??" Because gosh, how brains work is exceptionally cool, and if there is a way for endos to be real, that's pretty fucking neat.

So, for the record, I am not endo and I am not fully in their circles nor do I know much about origins whatsoever, so if anyone wants to chime in their thoughts or correct me on something, please do! For this next part, I'm calling endo alters/headmates "parts" just to keep the vocab streamlined and succinct.

Some common themes I notice in endos (for the most part):

They have basically no amnesia between parts

Some can create parts at-will, while others feel like they can't just create parts at will, but their parts just kind of exist

They usually can switch at-will or control switching to some degree or even completely

Some folks usually have some kind of trauma, but that's not saying much because all humans have trauma to some degree or another. Something I've noticed, though, is that this trauma is usually not in early childhood, but in later childhood, teen years, or adult years. (Please know this is not indicative of everyone, just what l've noticed in endos l've spoken to, don't come at me if your situation looks different please!)

All of these aspects come into play for my “theories” on how endogenic plurality can exist. For the record, my “theories” are more like…my own ponderings on the subject rather than something that should be taken as fact. Only endos can decide how they exist, not me.

So initially, my main theory with endos (which l've spoken about once, a while ago) is that it is "IFS on steroids."

IFS functions with the belief that all people have parts, and that to create cohesion in everyday life means finding ways to communicate between these parts and reach healing conclusions between them. Kinda like DID treatment except these parts don't have the "becoming autonomous and elaborating" part of DID. This is often seen in therapy related to addressing your "inner child" or "inner teen" but this can also apply to "the part of me that hates my dad" and "the part of me that wants him to love me." Remember, this is a singlet we are talking about, here! Singlets can also have conflicting and contradictory feelings about their family members. Having a "conversation" between these two parts might look like one of them stating all the reasons why it's better to cut him off because he always causes harm, while the other side may explain all the reasons why they want to keep him around. Weighing these "pros and cons" in this sort of scripted conversation between these two "parts" can help singlets come to an agreement between these two contradictory feelings and find a solution that is best for that singlet "as a whole."

However, what if someone who has parts of self like any singlet does finds a different way to converse with their parts? Or maybe not just converse, but imagine them? Consider that their "responsible self who is good at keeping on track" is the self that they kind of "dial into" at school or work, so that they stay on task—so then later, the part of themselves that prefers to goof off and have fun can have more time to do that. (These may be labeled as a “school/work self” and “home self” by singlets)

Maybe that responsible side of themselves feels like a guy whose name is probably like, Richard. And he's a boring, middle aged, office worker looking dude. And that fun and goofy version of themselves that would rather ignore homework feels like a teen named something funky like Rainbow. Well, the side of themselves that's responsible (Richard) is probably gonna get into a lot of arguments with the fun-loving side of themselves (Rainbow), which can look and feel like an internal debate or struggle of "well I can totally skip this assignment because I have a good grade and my show's season just dropped and I don't wanna fall behind while my friends are caught up" being answered with "um, no, if I don't stay on top of things, I'm gonna fall behind on my schoolwork, which is WAY more important than my show"

See how that can feel a bit like CDD but not actually be a CDD?

These endogenic IFS parts of self might even become slightly more autonomous (or seem slightly more autonomous) than a normal singlet's IFS parts over time, especially if having these internal conversations are a major coping skill during stressful times. These "stressful times" can literally just be "being a teenager" because holy shit being a teenager is stressful!! Does this mean every teen who is an endo in this sort of “IFS way” will grow out of it? No! If this is a positive coping mechanism that doesn't cause harm, they may still have these parts of self well into adulthood or even their whole life. Because guess what? Being an adult is also stressful as hell. It would make sense that these parts would follow them into adulthood.

They may even have traumas they have to address in therapy that these parts of self can help them address. This doesn't mean that trauma is held within a singular part to keep the others safe from the knowledge of said trauma like a CDD system, (even if that trauma is repressed—because even people who are traumatized as adults and non-systems can have repressed trauma) because most likely, all parts of self in this IFS situation are probably either totally aware (if it is not repressed) or totally unaware (if the trauma is repressed) and when it comes time to address said traumas, the parts (while maybe not quite as fully autonomous with completely separate experiences and memories like a CDD system) can still likely be quite elaborate and be very helpful when processing these traumas or negative experiences. Brains are cool! Brains are weird! They do weird stuff to cope with shit! I totally think it's plausible for someone's IFS parts to elaborate to some degree if it helps that person cope with life, even if they don't realize it's IFS or a singlet's version of plurality at all.

Does this mean they would technically be a singlet since they don't have a “genuinely” fragmented consciousness? Maybe?? Who are we to say, you know? If they feel like they are plural even if their consciousness is not fragmented in the same way a CDD system's would be, why not let them say they are plural? They are experiencing some kind of plurality, just completely differently than someone with a CDD-related fragmented consciousness would. Which is kinda neat, if you ask me.

I recently saw a tiktoker who explained they were misdiagnosed with DID, that they'd been re-evaluated by MULTIPLE CDD specialists and been told they do not have DID, but they have some kind of parts influenced by them being schizoaffective. They genuinely have parts of self that feel like they kind of "step in" to handle certain things, with names and appearances to boot, AND this person is very dissociative based on their scores on dissociative scales— which is why they were misdiagnosed by a trauma specialist (not a CDD specialist) in the first place. Their parts are coping skills based on their delusions. Does that make their parts any less real to that person? No, they still exist and they have for a long time, but they are not dissociative parts like in DID. They have some kind of parts that get them through daily life even though they do not have a dissociative disorder. How cool is that!!! They don't cause harm, so they're not something that has to be done away with or anything. This person can just BE schizoaffective with parts. And the therapists are cool with it. Go figure.

I haven’t even gotten to the part where someone with BPD can have schema modes that are kinda like parts. Not to mention that just because people with CPTSD and PTSD may not have fully autonomous ANPs and EPs like people with CDDs do doesn't mean that the person with BPD/CPTSD/PTSD may not try to “purposely” (or accidentally) semi-elaborate those parts by assigning names or identities to help them cope.

For example, if someone has an explosion of anger due to a trigger and that non-autonomous EP is responsible for it, they may associate that non-autonomous EP's anger with someone like, I dunno, Bakugo from MHA. (I know nothing about this anime I just know this is an angry guy don't come for me please lol) So every time this person gets triggered into an anger spiral, they may assign that behavior to a version of themselves that gets really angry like Bakugo, even though it's really just the ANP being influenced by the emotions of the non-autonomous EP. “Bakugo" may never “truly” be autonomous like an EP in a CDD system would be, but that person who has CPTSD or PTSD may feel like they "become Bakugo" every time they get triggered and angry because of that non-autonomous EP's influence. Eventually, the ANP may learn how to communicate with that non-autonomous EP Bakugo and learn coping strategies for “his” anger and process the traumas that caused that emotional response, which can actually help that person heal in the long run. I think non-CDD parts can totally be a helpful coping mechanism for trauma healing. Consider how much easier it is to be kind to someone else rather than yourself. A lot of trauma survivors are incredibly hard on themselves, but may do a 180 for their friends and uplift them when they are struggling with the same thing. If someone with C/PTSD finds it easier to communicate and encourage healing to “Bakugo” rather than themselves and it ends in them healing in the long run, I’d call that a net win.

Like sure, you can say "but they're not actually endo, they just have CPTSD" but like…if they don't have a fragmented consciousness but they feel like they "become Bakugo" every time that angry non-autonomous EP is triggered, wouldn't that kinda mean that they don't have CDD alters but still experience SOME form of plurality? They may have an extremely anxious non-autonomous EP that is like a different blorbo from their shows, or they might name a non-autonomous super depressed EP after Sadness from Inside Out. While they aren't experiencing CDD plurality, one cannot really argue that they aren't experiencing some kind of plurality, right?

And gosh, what about the folks who genuinely don't have serious enough trauma to have PTSD or CPTSD and aren't really needing the IFS parts to cope, but created their parts just because? Why not? Especially if they aren't trying to demedicalize DID a la Astrea's Web or purposely trying to throw vitriol into the community, what is the harm in it? I already mentioned that they really aren't making a mockery of the disorder, fake claimers are. So what’s the big deal, really?

Why can't we as traumagenic systems just let endos exist without concrete proof? From what l've gathered, there have been studies on non-traumagenic plurality (I believe @sysmedsaresexist has shared these studies before but I may be mistaken...sorry for the tag, SAS) so clearly scientists have noticed this is a thing that happens.

Aren't you, as a traumagenic system, fucking sick of fake claimers CONSTANTLY questioning your existence, your reality? Don't you think endos probably feel the same way towards us? Like yeah, we have a lot of scientific proof we exist, but fake claimers will straight up ignore that shit and say the scientists are wrong. Why are we doing literally the same shit? Like come on, put yourself in their shoes! Let them exist whether there's a bazillion studies on them or not! As long as they aren't trying to cause active harm to others or the community (most endos just wanna exist in peace without being constantly fake claimed and harassed, for the record—just like us traumagenic systems!), just let them be! Live and let live. We cannot dictate how they experience their life, whether it's real or not. (I personally think it is, it's just not the same as a CDD—our experiences with plurality are inherently different as a traumatized system of parts.)

I hope my very long ramble was of help to you and others?

Since opening up to the possibility of endos being real and not being so stressed about whether it is or not, l've just been a much happier person overall—not to mention have a much greater appreciation for how cool the brain is and what we as people do to cope with shit. Plurality as a whole is really fucking cool from a scientific perspective. I think being more open-minded and accepting in general will also just make you feel better as a person. We don't need to be asking all these questions, we can just let it be! It's way less stressful, tbh.

#endogenic safe #endogenic plurality #endo safe #manybutone #syscourse #personal post

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pumpkinsy0 · 8 months ago

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tldr: @buddyaldridge is a 30 year old weirdo proshipper who talks shit about ppl behind their backs, block em and report if you can/want to

just wanna let everyone know theres a omegaverse mpreg dallyboy writer whos been an all around WEIRDOOOOO cause their brain is LITERALLY porn rotted and they cannot fathom ppl actually having fun at all, their @ is @buddyaldridge aka @pelopsides previously known as @madelynprior

in 2020-2022 the outsiders tumblr they used to be @madelynprior and theyre a hardcore dallyboy stan which is already fucking weird, but on top of that, they would make teen pregnancy omegaverse smut fics which??? and im not gonna give you the ss, nigga im givin yall the LINKKK to see it with your own eyes so you know im not crazy

how ik its them is bc on their acc RIGHT before they switched to their buddyaldridge acc, and before that acc was named “pelopides”, they used to go by “madeleinepryor”, how ik its the same person is bc on a good chunk of their post, theyd tag it as “#madeleinepryor dispatches” on top of that, they just straight up linked their ao3 acc😭😭

heres what the link goes to, they linked their ao3 acc, they just changed their username on ao3 as well from madeleinepryor to greasers

now me calling them a proshipper isnt me talking out of my ass, they say it themselves like ughhhhjjj

as for them talking about other ppl, i wont share ALL the screenshots bc idk if the ppl theyre talking bad about would rlly feel comfortable w those being posted, if they know, they can feel free to post it on their own accord, so like i said, wont share, but i HAVE seen some and i can conform that they have done it, its ABSOLUTELY NOT above them

for now ill post the ss i CAN post rn which just proves my point

now ignoring that theyre talking smack, theyre just so odd and obviously didnt rlly think this through bc 1967 is ALREADY IMPLIED in the 60s, youre just incapable of reading things that arent about teen boys getting it on w each other PLEASE get a grip on reality😭😭

theyve talked about 14 year olds and their post on their acc just to shit on them, once again, GROWN ASS PERSON TWEAKIN OVER THE IDEAS OF A 14 YEAR OLD🗣️🗣️

NOW maybe your asking “how do you know the discord user and the tumblr user are the same person” AND I WILL ADMIT, while i DO have strong feelings they are the same person, its not 100% proven, HOWEVER buddyaldridge DOES go by buddy and that discord users name is buddy, so while its not concrete, the link IS there, once again, feel free to come to whatever conclusion you wanna come to about that

but what ISNT disputable is the fact that theyre a proshitter

additionally just this??? reblog from them????

on its own, not MUCH, bit considering the fics they make this is SO weird like??????

and finally, ive heard that theyve specifically came for me about my haitian shepards and maybe even my heritage, saying that they hated race hcs??????like using me as an example, they ss my acc and talked shit, someone contacted me about it and they dont have ss of it specifically, but they can vouch for it, and im not just gonna dismiss that, bc while they dont have ss, they do have ss and proof of everything else, so i do believe them, and theyve said if they find it they would show them to me, do what you wanna with this info

ANYWAYS buddy, your brain is unironically pornrotted, ur being a lil baby who cant do anything but cry and moan online on discord of all places and ur doing all this as a 30+ year old, and its CRAZIER bc youre doing all this while having “minors dni” in your pinned post, while also writing about minors, in a fandom MOSTLY OF MIDDLE SCHOOLERS!!!! (aka minors!!! ik age is hard for you to grasp) on top of that, literally ANY and ALL race hcs is way more believable and enjoyable than any “ideas” you’ve been cooking up in that odd demented, shriveled up pea brain of urs

anyways yea, that all i have to say, and im speaking for myself here, but i mean this with every fiber of my being, i dont know how you function in life but i DO NOT want you to go any farther, and i think others would/DO feel the same, ive seen what makes you cheer and i am PROUUUDDD to make you BOOOOO, you shouldnt be near minors at all, fictional or non fictional, you should BARELY be near other adults

plus if you go onto their acc rn, notice how when anon called them out, buddy aint even say they were wrong?? JUST SAYIN🗣️🗣️

im tagging everything i can tag bc i DO NOTTTT want mfs interacting w their blog, and want as many ppl as possible to be aware, dont say anything to them, dont give them attention bc obviously they’ll think this is funny and post it on their shitty discord server or whatever and giggle like they arent a grown ass nigga w bills to pay, trying so hard to cling onto their high school days, making fics about a canon middle schooler getting banged and pregnant, pls block and report do whatever u wanna do, just plssss dont let this proshitter on this damn sight near kidssss😭😭

dont take this as me WANTING drama, i dont, i just dont want ppl coming in this fandom thinking posting this shit and doing this is ok, youre bullying ppl for doing harmless things meanwhile your just making straight porn about a weird ship left n right, thinking YOUUUUU of all ppl have the place to talk about anyone or anything like your opinion on anything is valid😭😭

you NEED stones thrown at you

if anyone has anymore ss send em to mmeeeeee, but in the mean time ill be doin my own thing wooooo‼️‼️🔥🔥

#curly shepard #ponyboy curtis #tim shepard #angela shepard #darry curtis #darrel curtis #dallas winston #sodapop curtis #johnny cade #steve randle #two bit mathews #the outsiders fandom #the outsiders 1983

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lycheedr3ams · 1 year ago

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little blog announcement

TLDR: my könig fanfics from here on out will be focused on discovering his character rather than porn

rant below the cut

before you read this, just look into his eyes for a moment. are you seeing what i'm seeing? the pain and hardships he went through? the years of training and going to bed with broken bones and bruises and a bloody nose? the tears he cried alone because he had no one? can you see how many times he had to pick himself up because he was the only one he had? can you see the man who didn't get to live his dream, who couldn't be the one thing he wanted to be?

i have been thinking a lot about könig's character, story, personality, etc., and i've decided that i want to dedicate my fanfictions moving forward (for the most part) to things that only really make sense for his character. so, this means no porn without plot from me anymore.

there is so much porn without plot out there for könig, and i'm far from the best smut writer. there is an abundance of porn for könig, but far, far less fanfictions (even fewer halfway good ones) that actually have to do with his character. i don't mean disrespect to any fanfic writer, but i'm just very tired of the mischaracterization of könig. the same thing happens to ghost's character too, and several blogs have also posted about these mischaracterization issues.

yeah, some people might say this take is "too deep" or "it's not that serious", but i feel very connected to könig since i am similar to him in a lot of ways (obviously not in terms of being a killer lol). i have spent a lot of time lately just thinking about his character, and the more i think about him, the more i realize that there is so fucking much that most fanfic writers are missing about könig.

yes, we all love könig's accent, height, cock, and everything else that makes him sexually attractive. but what about the little boy who was bullied his whole life, who never had any friends, the one who dropped out of high school to join the army? the one who worked his way up from nothing to become a fierce and respected soldier? after all the porn without plot is said and done, what thoughts go through könig's mind at the end of the day? how does he interact with others? my point being, i want to dedicate my blog more to understanding his character. if you want könig porn without plot, there are many other blogs to find that from. I AM NOT SAYING PORN WITHOUT PLOT IS INHERENTLY BAD! Just that I don’t want to contribute to it.

I will still have porn without plot on my blog, but i will not be writing it myself.

this doesn't mean that i won't post könig porn. oh fuck no, i will have könig porn, but it will be in the context of a story and his character overall than just porn without plot. now, i might break this rule here and there if i have a really good idea, but i'd like to stick as close to my new personal rule as possible. i'm still going to finish the death's angel AU, and i will still be taking requests for butcher!könig cuz that AU is just so good.

but other than that, i seriously want to dedicate this blog to truly understanding könig: to getting under his skin and picking his brain and figuring out who he is behind the hood, who he is other than an austrian military sex symbol many of us - myself included - have made him out to be

if you disagree or don't like this, just don't interact. no need to be hateful. you'll get blocked if you're rude :)

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bloggingboutburgers · 3 months ago

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I'm here to bonce back on the "non tagging x reader content" when... Shippers do the EXACT same thing and get no flacks in returns?

ESPECIALLY mlm ones?

I mean why even bother? You either drool over those two men kissing or you're just a raging homophobe! Simple as that ! 😌 😇

You have no idea of the numbers of shipper accounts i had to block because they posted content for that ship that i hate without tagging it as shipping. And nobody bats an eye, everyone is cool with that because everyone ASSUMES you're into this.

And then they say shits like "Wow x reader is such a HATE CRIME am I right?" And everyone's agreed with them and you can't say shit in response because all the fandom back them up. (True story, i wish i made that one up)

And as a sex/romance repulsed aroace woman who's only comfortable with x reader fanfics to safely explore those complicated feeling the fuck am I supposed to do? I would get gutted on the street by the entire fandom.

And before everyone slash my throat : everyone should tag their content. No matter what it is. Shipping, x reader, whatever...

But why everyone is so comfortable shitting on the x reader community while the shippers get to do everything they want without any pushback????

Like idk how to say it, all the goods the x reader community gave me. Its the only community who accepted me in ANY fandoms i have been as an aroace woman, all the rest of the fandoms bullied me and tried to chase me away because i """"shipped myself""""" with male characters i saw as aroace coded too. The x reader community welcomed me and helped me carve my own space while the rest gave me fucking slack because I saw those characters as aroace instead of gay. (Because it is apparently the only valid queer interprétation ever)

Like fuck man...

This community is the only one who accepted to listen to me rambling about how those character were aroace coded and cheered for me writing about them while i was bullied off my first account because i did not agree with the popular ship.

I met more aroace people writing nsfw/romantic fics (YES I TAG THEM ALL) about those characters than i ever met in my entire life. HELL, each and every single Friend I made on this site came to me to thank me for my writing and they ALL turned out to be sex/romance repulsed aroace people.

TLDR : why is it always the x reader community that get flacked for doing something the shippers do since the very begining of fandoms without any repercussion?

Its getting old.

Sincerely an aroace sex/romance woman that will never let go of her x reader fanfics.

...OK ima be honest on that one

Personally I don't dig shipping OR xreader, I kinda put them in a "nope don't wanna read it" same bag

So yeah I don't get why people wouldn't see them on a same scale of value.

Literally people like different things and some would rather read different things and some wouldn't and everything's fine let's seriously just tag stuff to make our life easier and stop judging each other.

The absolute state of all of this. Jeeeeesus. That's part of why I don't even bother in fanfiction spaces anymore. That and the fac there's hardly ever anything that'd interest me anyway, I guess.

#i'm sorry i'm really tired and i've just had really bad news #but seriously #i don't get any of this #leave anon alone and leave us sex repulsed people alone jfc can't people respect each other #idk i'm so done rn #the absolute state of the world sucks

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jiraisupportgroup · 3 months ago

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hi!! is it so wrong to be a young jirai?

i feel so young in this community and idk what to do.. it feels like if people knew my true age theyd shame me or something. i respect the lifestyle and have felt the most comfort here than ever, but im so scared of people finding out my age and just blocking me

There isn’t anything particularly wrong with being young and in spaces like this - a lot of older people just don’t want to interact with minors for their own comfort (& vice versa). I can’t speak for everyone but there’s a lot of reasons for this. Especially in spaces based around mental health (and even more so with Jirai Kei being a space which isn’t inherently recovery based).

A lot of older landmines will talk about or RB things that are sexual in nature & it can feel kind of weird or gross when people who are much younger interact with posts about that stuff. Some people are also afraid because technically you can get in actual trouble if you’re posting nsfw content and knowing that minors follow you / will see it - although functionally there are hardly ever legal repercussions for this. It can still feel icky.

A lot of older landmines also just have trouble relating to younger landmines - our struggles might be similar but there can also be a lot of differences it really depends on the situation. Like a 20 year old and a 15 year old dealing with even the same issues can look extremely different, and sometimes we just can’t relate. Also the language that we use tends to be a bit different. I notice that it’s much more common for younger people to use more heavily romanticized language when talking about certain issues and a lot of older people can’t really relate because a lot of us are at a point where we’re just so defeated and sick of it. I don’t know how to explain this without giving examples but younger people make certain things look fun and new and exciting and like a thing to do while some of us older people have long past that phase and it’s just like a crushing reality for us at this point. It’s not fun anymore. And seeing people have fun with it can be upsetting for a number of reasons. That’s not specific to minors it’s just kind of a trend I’ve noticed. (I don’t know if I explained that well at all)

Another thing (and idk if this is just me) is that seeing teenagers talk about the same issues we have / had as a teenager is genuinely gut wrenching sometimes. It can be really hard to watch young people go down the same paths we went down and just wanting to scream at them to stop and turn back but knowing there is not a single thing we can do to help them - it can feel extremely disheartening sometimes. Especially on Tumblr bc a lot of us grew up on Tumblr and our illnesses were heavily influenced by the mental health spaces we were in on Tumblr & I mean for me at least I can confidently say that it had a negative impact on my mental health as a teenager and now being older it’s like aaaa fuck I don’t want the vents or things I post being shown to teenagers who could be negatively impacted by it just like I was at their age. Real Catcher in the Rye moment.

& some people just don’t really want to interact with minors. The differences between even 18 year olds and 15 year olds are pretty big. I mean I’m 24 and like I don’t really hang out in real life with people under 19 just kind of naturally - like not in “oh you’re only 18 we can’t hang out” kind of way but we just genuinely tend not to vibe. But again that’s just my personal experience so it’s super different for everyone.

There’s also a lot of minors who don’t want anyone who’s over 18 interacting with them for similar reasons. Often times it’s protection, but a lot of minors find adults annoying or not super relatable, which is just as valid.

Tldr: everyone has different comfort levels. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong or that people just automatically hate you bc of your age, it’s more so like the difference between teenagers & 20 year olds can be pretty big so sometimes they don’t want to interact with each other.

#idk if I explained this well at all I just woke up #good morning guys #also I’m so sorry if this sounds talk-down-y?#I promise I’m not trying to do that I just like idk how else to explain it #anyway #asks #anon #mara is yapping #jirai talk

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sleepanonymous · 1 year ago

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In light of recent events (that I fully missed and only caught the resolution of), I figured maybe I should drag this post out of my drafts instead of sitting on it like a coward.

TLDR: It’s important to respect the band, but it’s equally as important to respect your fellow fan’s wishes to not know Sleep Token’s identities.

(These two asks are from the previous drama, not what happened yesterday.)

I’ve had those 2 anon asks sitting in my inbox from that drama last month with a Tumblr user revealing Sleep Token’s names in a rant post because the guys did not unmask during/after the Wembley ritual. I hate to bring this back up but I feel guilty because I pretty much tossed a barrel of toxic waste onto that existing dumpster fire and walked away as everything exploded. I’d gotten back to everyone who DMd me and sent non-anon asks, but couldn’t answer these two. I didn’t want to publicly put that tumblr blog on blast because I did not want it to look like I was trying to instigate a witch hunt.

I had planned on ignoring these two asks since I had no way to DM the anon users, but figured I may as well use this as an opportunity to talk about something else: Sleep Token’s identities and respecting the band member’s wishes to stay anonymous.

Nowadays it’s nearly impossible to simply look up “Sleep Token” and not have the guy’s names and/or faces spoiled. It’s not your fault if this has happened to you, and you aren’t a bad person or disrespecting the band. Even if you looked up the information on purpose, that doesn’t make you disrespectful. It’s human nature to be curious, especially in regards to things that you love.

It’s okay if you know the names and faces of the member’s of Sleep Token. It is not okay to pass this information along in Sleep Token fan spaces, even if you disagree with the anonymity aspect or believe it’s just a gimmick. It is okay to be curious about the members and search for information about them online (such as old projects, public accounts, etc). It is not okay to harass them or their friends/family online (and yes, commenting “Worship” is harassment outside of Sleep Token’s official accounts). It is okay if you don’t find Sleep Token attractive after seeing their faces. It is not okay to hate on them or bodyshame them, especially in Sleep Token fan spaces. It is okay if you recognize the guys out in public, such as outside a venue. It is not okay to draw attention to them, take unsolicited photos of them, or approach them with anything other than respect.

The point I’m trying to make is that you can only be responsible for yourself. I am in a space where I regularly use Sleep Token’s first names, and relentlessly censor myself outside of that space to make sure I don’t accidentally namedrop. If I, an adult with ADHD and a 50 second attention span, can do this, so can you. Know that if you are refraining from openly sharing/spreading information about the band’s identities, you are not only respecting the Sleep Token’s wishes to remain anonymous, but you are also respecting countless other fans that are trying to avoid that same information for their own reasons.

It’s also important to remember there are people on the other side of the screen before sending hate. It’s easy to forget that a living, thinking, feeling, human reading what you’re saying. The best way to deal with people online who give you strong negative emotions is to block them and forget they exist.

If you’ve read this far then I just want to say that you’re amazing and I love you (especially if you’re my mutual or follower). You’re all truly the best community in this fandom. I hope you’re having/had a fantastic day. Forehead kisses and Large Mug Morning Espressos™ for all of you.

#sleep token #vessel sleep token #ii sleep token #iii sleep token #iv sleep token #vessel #ii #iii #iv #asks #answered #(technically)#sleepanon rant #i really cherish all of you #but i also understand if you disagree with what i've said in this rant #i'm also not trying to call anyone out #i've just had 80% of this sitting in my drafts for nearly a month #and it suddenly became relevant again

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th3-c0ll3ct3r · 1 month ago

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I used TOS so if their some error blame the software and not me.

And then if you have a pair of eyes you can see how the others conflicts are not his fault and I have other post going through how it's not his fault. But this is the main one so I will gladly explain it all.

But this will be the biggest benefit of the doubt I will ever give regarding someone allegedly messaging though in which afterwards the alleged account allegedly blocks them and then they delete their account. I did all the research I looks all the possible Solutions and personally I don't believe that it was real and the person was trying to fake it for attention because of the reasons that are going to be listed below, but I know that it can be argued that it was a scam account like many, to which I did this on my college breaks because the trend of hating on Scott and the Life series has come back and I swear he treats you all with maturity and some of you guys are just downright rude. And listen I did all this research so that you guys could come to your own conclusion because I'm not gonna force conclusion onto you, but I so highly recommend that you do your own research if you would like to instead of taking things at face value because that's how people wrongfully lose their careers over something that they had no control over.

And something that I didn't mention is why he didn't say anything and that's the easiest one to answer out of all of them bringing more attention to it is better for the scammer. I'm bringing more attention to it does not protect his community and it makes him seem more at fault than he is.

And to the people who are saying/claiming something happened to them like this more than 10 years ago I will tell you from now discord when public in 2015 so that's not possible and you should stop making up things.

Listen guys I'm pulling out all the research for this because I want to give you something insightful and informative so I'm not just wasting your time.

So, as you know there have been a lot of uprises in alleged content creators messaging minors on apps such as discord which will be the primary example of this whole thing.

It's one thing to have one instance of this but as you and me both now there a lot more than just one instance of this.

And I want to say this as respectfully as possible, I initially and admittedly thought that a lot of these people were faking it for attention and then I looked a bit deeper into it because I don't want to be that guy who takes things at face value and I can assure you I've done the research for you so you don't have to.

This will be your tldr from now, they are getting messages from grown adults with those accounts but it's not the same person/ the person that they think is. And this has come around through a unique feature that most social medias do not have and because Discord are a it sloppy when it comes to clean up.

In 2015, discord was made/publicly released and it was had some flaws admittedly. One of the flaws at the time was that someone could have the same username as another person a long with the same unique ID. And admittedly they patched this very quickly like within the year/ added a feature to combat this.

Since 2015, every Discord username has been cAsE sEnSitIvE and had a number attached to it calleda Discord tag or sometimes known asa discriminator (e.g., #0001). This lets you have the same username as someone else as long as you have different discriminators or different case letters. However, this also means you have to remember a set of 4-digit numbers and account for case sensitivity to connect with your friends. - source https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463-New-Usernames-Display-Names

If you do not know a content creators ID number then you can't accurately identify whether it's them or not. Which is definitely a problem I would say.

But this is something that I'm not going to go into detail about because I'm going to raise a different point regarding the section of the article that I took it out off; "This lets you have the same username as someone else as long as you have different discriminators or different case letters." ( this does not include display name)

Meaning that someone can't have the same name as someone else right? I want to go test this in myself with an alternate account of mine on Discord, any actually let me input the same name despite using different emails different logins and different devices. ( and I used the old name that people may know me from, H1.C0M).

I don't know how they allow that. Sooooooooooooooooooooo-

And the person in reference to this in the very original video of them going on to that account the o's in Scott Smajor's name had slashes in them which was the discerning Factor between the two names.

Well that's not the point where going to make, discord has a unique feature that allows someone to display a different name from their actual username. Hence, anyone can change their display name to anything else, and there does not have to be a difference in the display name to someone else. And yes I also tested this and there does not need to be different I can have my display name at anyone else. "Display names are not unique to each user and can be set to whatever you want, whenever you want (within Discord's Community Guidelines)." - source https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463-New-Usernames-Display-Names#:~:text=Display%20names%20are%20not%20unique,(within%20Discord's%20Community%20Guidelines)

And obviously you can choose your profile picture. Meaning that someone could message you with a different display name and someone else's profile picture ( and even the same unique username which I think is an error) and you wouldn't have no idea.

One of the first instances I saw of this happening was Grianmc, accounts asking people for money, which yes is a stupid scam that happened many years ago but I think it's set the leeway of this being a possibility.

And a more famous example of this happening was to Dream regarding his second allegation in which it was someone who was faking it and they promptly were reported and banned.

This is nothing new and it's honestly quiet upsetting. And I'm sadly not the only person dealing with such an error because if you Google right can someone have the same discord username as you, it will come up of results of people showing instances where people have the exact same account or duplicates of accounts trying to friend request them.

An even discord themselves have been putting in an effort to try and these accounts, and I don't even know how that doing it.

And for research purposes EXCLUSIVELY, yes I was able to make a fake smajor account. It's not that hard.

Discord is trying to cracks down on this stuff and that's fair, and as of recent they're replaced a large amount of unidentified usernames, so it's not like they aren't going anything.

And the original poster has since deleted their accounts after someone else, who is not me, called them out for faking it with proof (allegedly proof), inwhich they deleted their account.

This is to say, their are fake accounts of content creator DMing people, so block, report, abort.

And there would be genuinely no reason for him to put slashes in the o's because it's his name and if you see this account block it please

(the username looked something like: Sco̸tt Smajo̸r

And also the secondly, if you use an Internet to message minors, your Internet provider and the app your using will both be LEGALLY OBLIGED to tell the police. The Internet Provider he uses that has been stated on stream multiple times (apart from the TOS but) is Virgin Media. And as a well established FAMILY BRANDED company, they take the inappropriate Hensley have a lot of safety of their internet very seriously and therefore have a lot of safety guides which is also an Informant to tell you they can report you to the police if you engage in inappropriate content with anyone. https://www.virginmedia.com/blog/online-safety/inappropriate-content

They do this through a series of filters that whittles down your content and if they get flagged like you're doing something inappropriate they will look at because they have access to your IP address and therefore can look your personal personal data

https://www.olliers.com/news/can-the-police-track-you-via-your-ip-address/#:~:text=Yes%2C%20police%20can%20track%20IP,individuals%20through%20their%20IP%20addresses.

This therefore meaning that if someone was to commit a crime the internet provider will legally be obligated to inform the correct authorities tath the decision resolved.

Additionally Discord, also reserves the right to inform the authorities of any illegal or explicit activity that you do using that app as it is stated in that terms of service.

Meaning that for most people it would literally be less than two weeks before they get called especially if the messenger is from the UK.

#discourse #mcyt #scott smajor #smajor1995 #trafficblr

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piosplayhouse · 2 years ago

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Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

(or, an extended study in how to hate your own playerbase as much as humanly possible)

(or, or, tldr there's pretty much no updated information on just how ridiculously bad this game is so here's a writeup on how I got banned and all the subsequent information I found during my time playing for documentation's sake)

Part I. The Backstory

My beloved followers will know that a few months ago I began playing Horse Isle 3, a horse-raising MMO surprisingly released in the year of our horse 2019 despite its 1997-era website and Runescape-esque graphics. Some of my play through (mostly just horse pictures) is chronicled in my tag #homophobic scum horse chronicles ¹ if you want to see how drippy my horses were before they killed me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have endless respect for small teams of game devs that manage to create insanely impressive products-- which HI3's elaborate real-genetics breeding system, its main draw, certainly is. Coding is hard, modeling is hard, moderation is hard. Tip a coin to your local small indie teams that work hard to make incredible art.

However, HI3 is far from an admirable success story about a small dev team that triumphed over its obstacles.

The game is known for a variety of things, chief among them being the staff's rampant homophobia (which has earned it the moniker "the homophobic horse game"), hilariously uncharismatic mods (to the point where one of the main moderators, Connie, is mentioned by NAME in the majority of poor reviews of the game), the dev team's unrepentant rejection of criticism, and racism with a side of downplaying war crimes.

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

Now, it's marketed as a game for ages 8+, which, as I've briefly talked about before, is unfortunately a rarity in today's hostile internet climate. I grew up on a variety of typical child friendly MMOs like ye olde Pixie Hollow and PetPet Park, and truly lament that so many of these have been shut down over the years. As such, I have no issue with strict rules or word filters in games, with the caveat that they are effective and genuinely intended to keep people safe. Kids are naive, and can and will say things that they shouldn't (I, for example, got kicked from a Minecraft server when I was 8 because I posted in chat that my mom told me sex wasn't a bad word. things happen). Filters are a very appropriate tool to aid manual moderation of chat features, especially in an environment where mistakes will be made.

However, HI3's, as shown below (words that are forbidden from chat are marked in red), are... questionably selective.

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

This appears to be attributed to the fact that along with having horrible moderators, HI3 also seems to have a remarkably horrible developer backend, which is a trend that you'll see pop up quite a lot in this post. Taken straight from the horse's (haha) mouth, the lead developer is the only person who seems to be able or willing to add to the filter list, and for whatever reason only wants to block the "most common inappropriate words"- because saying transgender is more of an issue than nazi and gulag I guess.

(Screenshot taken from Top R.'s Sitejabber review, here)

¹ I'm not sure how far this will reach out of my audience, and since people have already assumed weird stuff about me I thought I should probably clarify-- I'm not calling the game "homophobic scum" ghghg, my play through was focused on making horse versions of characters from a novel called "scum villain", so I took the scum and added horse (I actually have another tag for a different horse breeding game called "scum horse chronicles" so I needed to distinguish them easily but am not very good at tagging). That's it.

Part II. The Game

The game itself is, putting it simply, a mess at best and openly hostile towards newcomers at worst. The game's UI is comparable to your average petsite with 20 thousand things to click on but if you tried to navigate that while also watching the Pilgrim's Progress movie by Scott Cawthorn on 90% of your screen. This is a very good overview of what your experience first logging in will be like, with the added caveat that talking in global chat costs in game currency and that the game doesn't tell you this at ALL until you try to type in chat, and that depending when you log on it's entirely possible that you'll spawn into a completely dead town miles away from anyone who can help you, wilderness survivor-style.

To make things more complicated, information about the game is split between the game itself and the laughably horrible website/forums. Spectacularly enough, the forums, which provide vital game information and rule elaborations, cannot be searched in any way (not via Google or any hard-baked search bar) and are regularly purged by admins to erase evidence of scandals and poor moderation complaints.

Now, something you will find to be generally people's biggest issue with HI3 is their strict no "date-speak" rule, which sounds ok on paper but is worded *just* vaguely enough to give the moderators full jurisdiction over whether or not they think you're breaking the rules. Selective moderation is a major theme in the HI3 chronicle, but it is perhaps most documented with regards to this rule, because what the hell does "boyfriend/girlfriend talk" even mean?? Outside of vagueness, this rule has also been scrutinized extensively by others due to the fact that a pair of previous moderators were openly married with the igns "FrogLips" and "MrsFrogLips". I don't personally think this is super condemning, since kids usually address adults by Mr/Ms etc whether or not they know they're in a relationship, but regardless it's clear that the complete lack of elaboration on what this rule means can be easily manipulated to lodge any number of complaints against people.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website rules page, here)

What I will say, however, is that this rule would probably hold more water if the game wasn't literally about breeding horses.

You can pimp out your horses, you can pay others to breed your mares, you can put any number of special (real life currency-bought) amulets on your horses to make them more fertile/have twins/give birth faster. I paid $1000 to castrate Jiang Cheng. The word "stud" (which btw, is another word for a black butch lesbian) is used constantly. Perhaps most shockingly, horse inbreeding is very common and accepted among the community, to the point that it is explicitly mentioned and EXPLAINED in the game guide; the only penalization for it is that your incest product foal will have a lower intelligence stat. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though implementing and acknowledging that horses can breed with their own relatives is hmm perhaps more harmful than another player saying the word gay, but what do I know.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website game guide page, here (only accessible with an account))

Well, you might ask, after you breed and sell a horse, is there any way to put a brand on it so you know it's from your ranch? That's where the "prefix" system comes in. Prefixes are bolded titles that appear in front of a horses name in lists and in the overworld, and are described in the official game guide as follows:

(Screenshot from the same Horse Isle website game guide page as linked previously)

I think you can toggle them off if you don't want to see them, though I could be wrong. They're basically just 1-5 letter titles you can put on your own horses (nobody else's, importantly). There's no way to search prefixes, and you won't see them in game unless either a horse with a prefix is listed in auctions or you actually encounter someone in-game and see their horse.

In fact, I would learn later that not even the moderators monitor the prefixes, and apparently have no way to mass-delete them. At all.

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

Now, it's not unusual that a game as complicated as HI3 would inevitably have a pretty taxing server-side code. Millions of multifaceted assets and features is really nothing to scoff at. However, the notion that your lead developer has to perform a manual search in the game's code to delete the equivalent of a stamp from every instance individually is hilarious. I'm not going to pretend to be a game developer, but there HAS to be a better way of coding a feature that intakes user-generated content that should probably be monitored regularly than that, right? Or, at least, there should be a robust filter system that could prevent any issues from occurring before they would need to be fixed so tediously. You might think.

On December 29th, 2022, I discovered how to register a prefix. It's very common to headcanon the characters I was naming my horses after as transgender, and I thought it would be cute to attach "TRANS" to my horses as a nod to this. However, a filter blocked the word. I was disappointed, but not surprised², and then tried to think of another word that was under 5 letters. To my complete and gay surprise, "GAY" was not filtered out, and henceforth, this worked as my prefix.

As you can see on the popup here, there are scant guidelines for what the requirements for a prefix should be. And, in this moment of apparently utter foolishness, I was under the impression that since "GAY" was NOT filtered out despite there clearly being a filter on this function, it was ok to register. Possibly it's not filtered because it's a synonym for "happy", I thought, which is also cute because I do like when horses are happy. Perhaps the staff had learned from their past criticism and had loosened the restrictions slightly because they felt restructuring was appropriate now that gay marriage is legal in the US, I imagined.

(My original post)³

What I could not imagine, however, was that the only reason the word wasn't filtered out, despite being possibly the most common sexuality-related word, was just because the lead dev couldn't be assed to add it to the filter list. And that apparently I was supposed to know this because it would lead to a permanent ban on my second offense with no warning.

² Hence typing "eat shit lol". Admittedly childish of me, but I didn't put a lot of thought into the post because it was just part of a casual silly live blog I was doing to blow off steam. The "if I get banned" tag surprisingly was not referencing "GAY", as I genuinely thought I was in the clear for that for reasons stated above, but because I tried to register "TRANS" and then posted about it online. You don't have to believe me, but I feel the need to defend myself since some people have wildly extrapolated that my actions were malicious instead of just a split second decision I made because I was bored one morning.

³ Despite the pop-up box saying that prefixes cannot be removed, they actually can at any time, given only that the person that owns the prefix unregisters the horse from it. The unregistering mechanic is for whatever reason not told to the player upon registering the prefix, but is mentioned in the official game guide linked above.

Part III. The Ban, The Report

I will preface this section by saying that I played the game normally. I do like being outrageous sometimes for my followers' entertainment, but I really don't like dragging random people into my antics if they aren't interested. Because of this, I really didn't interact with other players unless we were mutuals on some other platform. I rarely used the chat feature except to participate in server-wide events that required team participation, and I typically just explored on my own for fun. In general I think I was a pretty ok player, objectively, which lines up with my user trust score.

You see, the way moderators of HI3 allegedly keep track of rule breaking is through a "user trust score" with points added if you use features in the game, help people, etc, and points deducted if you violate rules. Anecdotally I've heard that around the -10 total points mark is when moderators put you on a sort of list to be monitored for suspension or punishment, which is pretty reasonable.

By the time I was banned, I had a score of +31. The -10 offset was a part of this debacle. The only thing I had ever done in the game which warranted any kind of violation was, as you will soon see, literally just naming about 30 of my own horses "GAY", a sin egregious enough to apparently offset about 200 hours worth of playtime with no issues.

Because of this, I was a little bit confused on multiple levels. For one, I had never even seen a moderator in game, nor been informed of discipline at any time before. On top of that, their permanent ban notification is extremely strange and vague. The text pop up when you try to log in just reads "Account currently banned -1 minutes ().", which is probably just copied straight from the server-side code for things and just wasn't translated into user-side comprehensibility. You'll also notice there is a "()" section in the notification, which I would assume is where they put the reason for bans, except for the fact that mine was completely blank.

The website which allegedly would hold more info just repeated a near identical code: "BANNED! -1min. Reason:".

So, with nothing else to go off of, I messaged support on the jankiest help center submissions I've ever seen on a website with this:

"Insisting" and "total disregard" are very strong words to use for a situation in which I just typed a word into a textbox because the game let me, I'd think, which is why I tried to reason with her. The prefixes mentioned in my message are well-known amongst the userbase and are much older and wider-spread than mine, so I would think that there would be at least some sort of precedent for this. The "geldings and yearlings" reasoning was mostly a joke, but also intended to express that the nature of an acronym (as the majority of prefixes seemed to be) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Intent was thrown around a lot when I was discussing the issues of prefixes with other users, and it seemed to have been used to excuse previous behavior in situations where mods liked the users in question better.

I also cannot emphasize enough how much they did not warn me about my prefix being removed. When I logged in and saw my horses' names did not include it, I was suspicious that the moderators removed it just because of the history of their behavior. However, I had no hard evidence because they did not inform me at ALL. Not through in-game mail systems, not through server messages, not through the website. Complete radio silence except for the addition of an unexplained "-10" to my user score. I did complain to some people that I thought it was removed, but a combination of things suggested that it wasn't a huge deal, so I mostly let it lie. For one, I had over 100 hours of playtime and was mildly worried that one of my chat messages had been flagged without my knowledge. For another, my profile text had also mysteriously disappeared, probably because of a glitch, so who knows what could happen in this game. Lastly, I went to the prefix registry again just to check and hilariously enough, they didn't actually block "GAY" from the database. Yeah, they apparently individually deleted it from all of my horses, but couldn't be assed to add such an "inappropriate" word to their filter system.

So I just registered it again and publicly told people that I would do it again if the mods didn't actually tell me to stop. I didn't really care about the prefix because to me, the feature was purely cosmetic. All I wanted was transparency from the staff.

Well, anyway, I assume Connie couldn't think of a comeback, so she just closed my report. I was annoyed because quite literally none of my questions were answered and she didn't even refer to anything in specifics. It would take less than 1 second to type the number of the rule I violated, but I guess that was too much work for her.

I tried to give them as many outs as possible to just apologize about poor communication, but they didn't even take the bare minimum. I would also like to mention that this support ticket process is the ONLY way to directly communicate with any staff. There's no ability to upload files or images on this system, and no email listed that you could contact. So essentially, there's no way to give actual evidence for anything you say even if you want to.

Kat, who is known as the slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-bad mod then picked up the case. Her response actually provided specific information, which made it leagues above Connie's, but still included some very strange elements for sure.

The notion that this game is intended for a worldwide audience is especially funny to me because you would really think if they cared about other countries they wouldn't violate their own rule one by using a slur for Europe's largest ethnic minority, but ok. It's a weird hill to die on considering how USA-dominated the staff's opinions towards rules are (Connie justifies the usage of a slur for Rromani people based off the opinion of a single roommate she had who reclaimed it, Joe defends a store in-game being called "The Gulag" because Americans don't think gulags are that bad (discussed and cited in the conclusions section)). But then again, picking and choosing what parts of other countries' customs you want to respect is very American, which is why I think they should add an extra star rating for its patrioticness on the website.

As I mentioned before, the prefixes I included in my response are definitely older and more commonly-used than mine, so I'm not sure how they wouldn't have seen them before. This comment also ties back to the suggestion that the moderators have very little control or insight over a distinct feature of their game, which is not a great thing to admit so casually.

Kat has a strange habit of immediately contradicting herself in the same paragraph, as can be seen here. "The glitches never happen and bugs were quickly fixed, but games still have bugs". "People that break the rules usually write in to ask what was wrong, but most people usually never ask". At this point I think we can confidently say that they don't even make an attempt to proofread any of their responses, to be honest.

Her 7th paragraph has one of my favorite lines in this exchange. "If we had to notify players every time we made moderator changes to their account we would spend 24 hours a day" is giving huge Yandere Dev "stop emailing me because I have to spend 24 hours a day reading all my emails instead of coding" energy. You really have to wonder why these people that seem to hate moderating so much are moderators.

You can tell by my response, but I do not like the use of "most" and "usually" in this at all. What's your standard isn't others' standards, and this is a topic which needs to be navigated gently, especially when kids are concerned. I never played the previous Horse Isles. I had no experience with the mod team, or with violations, or with anything because no one bothered to take five seconds to send me a message. No, I did not know that you would permaban me for typing a word that's in one of the most popular traditional Christmas songs in a place were only people who interacted with me would be able to see it. Most games would not do this. To take a lackadaisical approach to your literal job of community management because you want people to moderate themselves is contradictory to your claims of keeping children safe.

I will admit I was being a bit cheeky here as a subtle hint that perhaps they should take feedback, but I also would have taken a genuine response. I try my best to be as polite as possible to tech support staff because not everyone is! But they're people too and a simple thank you is worth a lot in customer service, even virtual. But Kat... you're not really giving me anything to work with here! If anyone reading this has feedback for how I could've rephrased things, feel free to comment them honestly. I actually ran drafts of these messages through a few people before sending them to make sure I was as concise and polite as possible, even if support clearly wasn't interested in reciprocating the effort ("following out rules using the the GAY to begin with"...?).

Part IV. The Backlash

I won't go too into depth in this section because it's more personal than documentarian, so feel free to skip to the next section if you want!

After this, the girlies were not happy with me. The one saving grace of HI3 that I've heard pop up over and over again is that the community is great. And a lot of users are! Don't think I'm disparaging people who play the game because I'm not-- it's a really fun experience with the right people. I was in a Discord server with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and kind.

However, within the community, there's also a pervasive culture of silence. According to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest, a lot of people will refuse to go public with their complaints about the staff due to fear of retribution, which I feel is unfortunate but understandable. There's a pressure to shut up and eat your food lest you be seen as someone causing controversy for the sake of it and ruining the sanctity of the game, which is an attitude explicitly encouraged by the staff (discussed more in the next section).

I liveblogged my entire correspondence with the support team to a group of other players for the 2 days I talked to them, and did have a lot of acceptance from people who appreciated someone speaking out. After the 2020 Mane Quest article, public information had sort of just gone dark as the community was pushed further into niche seclusion, despite things not improving at all. However, towards the end of my messaging, a group of people that I had never even spoken to or seen online before accused me of a variety of things ranging from "displaying my sexuality to children" (note: all I ever did was name my horses "GAY". I never once talked about my own sexuality in-game, nor did I say the word in chat ever) to "joining the server to cause drama" to "mocking the lgbt community by throwing around the word gay" (actually I'll attach a picture of this one even though I don't want to put people on blast in this section just because its so funny).

I think most of this can be attributed to the game having gained such a notoriety that longtime players, especially those with strong nostalgic feelings, have become completely desensitized to it. And this compounds with the fact that the game is so niche it doesn't yet have a good alternative to turn to to create a toxic cocktail where people tell themselves that they have to be loyal to the staff to play this one of a kind game-- and that anyone who doesn't follow them just doesn't understand. It's really sad, honestly.

Part V. Conclusions

I don't necessarily think the devs of HI3 are legitimately consciously homophobic-- unfortunately LGBT rights are still controversial amongst the largely southern and rural population of horse enthusiasts, and I could understand if they felt it necessary to skim the line towards conservatism to maintain a userbase. It's cowardly and dumb but it's not a sin to do what you have to do to survive in a capitalistic hellscape as cutthroat as the game industry.

However, what I do think the devs are is power-hungry and hypocritical. They have failed at every turn at community management because they're unwilling to admit they make mistakes, instead choosing to issue non-apologies like "[we] regret you guys got so upset and did not realize neither our true intentions nor motivations nor the whole situation [that we said it's ok that a player has a shop called The Gulag because it's 'not direct or violent']". To respond this way to a userbase filled allegedly with young children as a fully grown adult with a wife and kids is laughably out of touch. 'Sorry your fee-fees were hurt by our adult moderator responding to a serious complaint about inappropriate user-generated content with "lol", but actually you just misunderstood us and we're going to ban anyone who brings this up again' is the sort of response you'd see from the teenage mod team of an Undertale amino, not the supposedly responsible head dev of a 'rare oasis of kid friendly content'.

Telling an audience of impressionable kids that the fact that their feelings are hurt is their fault for not intuiting the intentions of 40+ year old adults is unbelievably toxic, and it's no wonder why people are so nostalgia-bound to feverishly shut down criticism about the games. They've been guilt-tripped into believing the mod team can do no wrong and any controversy, even if valid, that springs up is just extrapolated by people that haven't been laboriously groomed to know what the mod team wants to hear.

Countless times throughout my time researching and playing the game, the number one advice I've heard has always been "suck up to the mods or they won't do anything for you". It's crystal clear that the moderators care more about the joy they get from having power over some 200 users who will kiss their ass if they say a buzzword more than they care about you, your child, or the game itself.

It's essentially a model scam Kickstarter's wet dream, a game propelled to release and popularity by its singular defining feature and left to fester on the shelf as the only game in its niche market. Because of this, I believe there's truly no better way to describe HI3, with its messy backend, refusal to improve, narcissistic moderators, broken features, poor visuals, and inefficiency than as the Yandere Simulator of horse games.

#img descriptions in alt text!#lmk if there's any way I can make this more accessible! It's my first time writing something this long on tumblr :)#long post #really long posts #long posts #really long post #essay #hi3 #horse isle 3 #horse isle #fandom drama #hobby drama #discourse #homophobic scum horse chronicles

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