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[tropcal]

I want to begin with four things: 1. I’m sorry to do this anonymously. I spoke to numerous people, on and offline, close and far to this situation, and all agreed that it would be best for all of us for me to be nameless. I hope you’ll understand why, and I hope you’ll bear with me to the end even so. 2. We are all lovers of words, I don’t think anyone can deny that, so we all understand their power. I have done my best to choose the right ones. 3. I wish I could be polite and say that this isn’t something that requires a reply, but it is. Of course I’ll wait for you, I understand having a life offline, and I understand that you’re not one person or entity and have separate lives, I have one too. But this is a conversation, not me sending you a message that I want ignored. I hope I can convey the gravity of how difficult it is for me to send this, and how much I wish I didn’t have to. 4. I truly, truly don’t believe you’re bad people in any capacity, seeing as I write with you and I’m happy to see DiVerona flourishing, I remember the first time I saw the teasers on my dash and it’s amazing what you’ve done and what it has become. Which is why I feel like I have to send this.

Abuse is a loaded term. It implies maliciousness and cruelty and evil, and that’s what I used to think of it as, bruises and shouted fights. It took me a long time to understand the full spectrum of abuse, and now that I have, I see how deep rooted it is in this community I love so. I’ve been writing here for longer than I want to acknowledge, I’ve been in and am in many roleplays. I know the consequences of saying that your team has behaved abusively, which is why I want this to be a private dialogue. Not only for my sake, to protect me and my reputation in this community, but for yours as well.

I will admit that I toyed with posting something in the tags, getting my friends to reblog it en masse, but that would be petty and cruel and like I’ve stated and will continue to state, I do not believe you are malicious, or cruel, or evil. I do not believe you are bad. I think you’re brilliant people who made a mistake that is actively harming me and your players and I really, really want to correct it. I hope this does not come across condescendingly. I really do, I hope this comes across in the best possible light because I do fear confrontation and I am afraid I’ll trigger one or many of you as I have been triggered. I hope I don’t. More than hope. I am trying very actively to write these words as I intend for them to be heard.

These words are intended for Admin Em in particular, though I know how scary and how wrong it can be to have a finger pointed solely at you and that is not my intent:

It was your announcement that first set my pulse racing. About your lives offline. At first, it moved me, and then I was left with something rotten tasting on my tongue. You gaslit those anons. Their messages weren’t rude, they were understandable, observations without anything mean behind them. 

“Aside from admin em the rest of the team has been mia for weeks now. Do they plan on coming back or will new admins be potentially chosen?” “This isn’t criticism or something meant to stir up trouble, merely an observation that I’m hoping is wrong.”

There was truth and kind intent in their words and you opened your response began with calling them rude. As I read on, the second time, I felt sicker.

There was no way for those anons to know what your team’s lives were like without you having explicitly told them beforehand. 

Gaslighting involves several tactics I see in this message: 1. An abuser gaslighting uses things that matter to you in their attacks. In your announcement, you state ‘I wish we could say our team could move on from this, but the apparent lack of faith in our team despite our consistent maintenance, events, and planning is really discouraging’, directly holding the roleplay, which matters not only to those anons but your plays as well, hostage because of those messages.

2. The abuser aligns other people against you. You published this chastising message on your main for all your followers to see. You collected positive messages and commentary and emotionally manipulated everyone with your words: ‘It’s extremely painful knowing what my fellow admins have gone through and despite that continue to create content because they love Diverona so much, only to receive messages like these. Perhaps we should create a poll and see if members would like us to be replaced.’

3. The abuser’s actions do not match their words. The messages were about your co-admins not having been on the main, and you replied with things those anons couldn’t possibly have seen.

4. The abuser tells you and/or other people you are crazy. This one I think is most obvious: you turned these two anons into war cries. You lined up shots against them and fired them off. 

This is gaslighting. This is abuse. And what came next was a pattern I’ve seen over and over again, from my own abuser, from people I love’s abusers, and this is what has pushed me forward to here.

You compiled messages upon messages about how special you and your roleplay are. Which I don’t doubt are sincere or deserved but they are cruel whether or not you intend them to be. People loved and still love my abuser and they would shove that in my face, over and over again, they were beloved and popular and I am worthless. Which is what you are doing. 

I do not deny how nice it is to receive acknowledging, kind messages. I do not deny wanting to keep the ones I have. But in this case, it only adds to the case I see for abuse.

You are not abusive people. You are not the abusers that make me sick and shaking. You are not cruel or evil or malicious or bad but you have done a bad thing. 

There is such a problem of abuse within the roleplaying community. By writing this I don’t mean to imply that you yourselves have not suffered abuse and will not ever again suffer abuse, and I’m terribly sorry about that. Admins of roleplays (having been one myself, I understand, time limits and lives and demands) have inboxes stuffed with hate and words whispered offline about them. It’s taxing and makes you fragile. But. Having my abusive actions pointed out always made me shocked. I was abused, I can’t be like the people who abused me. We’re all capable of those things, though. That doesn’t make us like the bad ones, unless we refuse to acknowledge or correct abusive behaviour.

Which is was I beg of from you. 

Please, please acknowledge what you have done. Please apologise to us, your followers, and to those anons. Not for being human, not for being tired, not for having lives and being away but for your actions that they didn’t deserve.

And please be cognisant of what you our doing.

Our community needs your brilliant minds and words and we need you to be on the forefront of the fight to keep us all mentally healthy and rid this site of abuse.

Thank you.

You can contact me on Skype or here if you request it.