To Whom It May Concern;
I decided recently to leave an rp I was part of for just over a year. And I should have left sooner, but I was incredibly selfish. Back in May my best friend and roommate, Lola, was removed or asked to leave from the Glee RP NYADA Is Magic for what the admin’s claimed was best for her “mental health.”
I wanted to write something to explain why I left. It’s not because I’m bitter, but because I don’t want to see it happen to anyone else in this community where there is already a lot of drama.
The whole side of Lola’s story and details behind it are found HERE in this post. I won’t go into it too much be trust me it’s all there in that link.
Please read more below for my reasons.
Right after this occurred I told Lola that I was going to walk. And I didn’t. I stayed and it wasn’t the right decision. It looked as though I chose everyone in the rp over her and really I chose myself and a fictional character. I didn’t stay because of the players. I am still very very angry and hurt by what they did. I stayed because I couldn’t let go of a fictional character or let go of writing him. Even if I wanted to continue Adam, it sends the wrong message to the admin team that probably thought I was okay with the way they treated Lola.
I was so grateful to be a part of this amazing verse. It was elaborate and fun and probably my favorite Adam I’ve done to date. The interactions were great and the structure of the RP was different than any other I had ever been in and it’s obvious that the admins spent a lot of time creating this. I am grateful for being accepted into this RP, I really am. I just wish I could redo it all but do it differently.
Since Lola left I had remained out of the OOC chat and only stayed in contact with a few of the members in the rp. I didn’t know what to say to everyone, not just the admins. My activity dropped as I tried to process what happened and I had some hiatuses and semi-hiatuses and posted here and there with Adam but when I came back to try and be fully active on the dash it felt entirely different. I wasn’t trying to put it behind me (because what happened was still wrong) but I wasn’t going to change how I played Adam as a character. Adam’s attitudes had not changed toward characters, but it certainly felt as though the other characters changed toward Adam.
Everything felt strained and when Adam’s birthday came about there wasn’t a happy birthday or gift from any of the characters. I know, I know. That sounds selfish but it’s a little odd especially when it was a complete 180 from the year before. It hurt all over again, and I realized this hurt isn’t going to go away, no matter how much I want the game to be what it once was..
What hurt worse was when another character’s birthday came up in game after Adam’s and suddenly there was a party that was thrown seemingly spontaneously in a chatzy and all this outpouring toward them. I felt more isolated. It’s not a good feeling and I guess I didn’t have to work so hard before for Adam to get attention, and I know exactly how entitled that sounds believe me, but it’s true. I took for granted that Adam’s birthday came and went and maybe he’d get a text or something from at least one of his best friends.
I don’t want people to think I’m leaving just because of the experience I had the last two months in game. That’s just the aftereffects of me staying.
To keep it simple I am leaving because of the way that a fellow RPer was treated throughout her time at NIM. I had been naive or ignored the incidents for one reason or another at the time they occurred. I often defended the admin team or other players because I had come to trust all of them and believed that Lola might have been reading too much into it. I was telling Lola, “oh no that’s not what they meant. I’m certain they like you, it’s all alright. Tone is very hard to understand through online messages. I’m sure what they mean is...” I was in denial.
Lola told me that she believed Sebastian was being treated differently after he became close with the McCarthy twins. She hadn’t expected him to go that route but she loved exploring it. Especially when Sebastian fell for Madison. That came out of blue but her muse guided her in that direction. At one point Lola read me a conversation she had with one of the admins regarding Sebastian and Madison dating. It was advised to her that the two of them should break up and he should date someone of a lower status to challenge him more.
I remember being annoyed when she first told me about it. Since when does an admin dictate who your character can and can’t ship with? Furthermore there were multiple occasions in lengthy admin posts about updates or news about the rp/game that informed the players that we shouldn’t be focusing on ships as they were not the focus of the game. It was believed that everything was too ship heavy and only seemed to be mentioned after Madison and Sebastian got together.
In real life, relationships happen. They help you to grow as a person and, while one would want to keep the main verse/plot of the game in mind, ships are going to happen and they will affect what your character does and who that character develops into. For someone like Sebastian to care about another person and love them, that is a development and being around the McCarthy’s helped develop his views on the world and even began to change him. It wasn’t as though Lola had Sebastian strictly focused on Madison; she was helping to change him. Which I’m told by Lola there was a separate conversation that occurred in which she was told Sebastian was developing too fast. He really wasn’t. He didn’t change overnight. He began to change in a span of a couple months.
I was part of one of the most public and long standing ships in the game and I don’t believe I was ever told once that I needed to chill with shipping. The feelings toward the ship I was in versus Sebastian and Madison felt very different. I don’t even recall anyone acknowledging Madbastian that much. And I’m not saying this is in direct correlation to the attitude difference and the fact I shipped pretty darn heavily and was never told to chill, but my ship partner happened to be one of the admins.
Toward the end of December, Lola found her muse suddenly waning and struggled a bit in game. I know Lola was feeling isolated and she didn’t feel like she could talk to the admins about it and took a hiatus at the beginning of January to try and figure out why Sebastian was so quiet in her head. I helped her with it the best I could and even tried to help come up with ideas to get Sebastian active and progressive in the RP with Adam, someone he didn’t frequently come in contact with. She had her own ideas for branching out more and getting him back involved with other characters. And when she came back from her hiatus she was chided like a young child before she could even share all her ideas with the admins. “No more excuses.” Is a direct quote from the conversation she had with them. I read through what was originally sent to Lola by the admins, and it’s impossible to not feel attacked by it. I was angry at that. And maybe I should have told her to quit then but I encouraged her to stay and not allow them to make her feel the way they did.
The day came where she was asked to leave. The night before there was an interaction between Sebastian and another character. During this conversation Sebastian had made reference to that character being a “homicidal maniac” in relation to that character's desire to slaughter innocent creatures that had to do with the current plot of the game. The conversation did get heated in character and there was a part of that conversation that triggered Lola and caused her to feel incredibly hurt when Sebastian was compared to someone who is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, widely known sexual abuser. Please note it was not brought to Lola’s attention if Sebastian’s harsh words had affected the opposite player out of character or not. But this had affected Lola as a person and writer not just Sebastian.
I told her to go to the admins, because if you’re triggered by something that’s what you need to do. That’s what every game ever tells players to do, right? So, at the very least, a conversation can be had and everyone involved can at least come away with an understanding. It’s worth mentioning that Lola had been the subject of a “trigger workshop” just a couple of weeks prior, because someone was “uncomfortable” with the potential polyamorous relationship Sebastian was considering. Someone was triggered by the potential for a character to grow into a legitimate orientation, and that warranted a conversation with all five (5) admins, Lola, her ship partner and another player; but when Lola went to the admins to discuss an IC insult that had bothered her out of character, there was no such conversation, and no such concern for the person who brought up the issue.
The following morning (after seeking help/advice from the admins) she was told it was best to leave because they could tell it was affecting her mentally and it would be best for her “mental health.” I’ve never seen someone removed based on a trigger. They said it was a decision that was building for a while and claimed they were concerned for her mental health. What they really meant is that for ‘a while’, they hadn’t approved of Lola’s characterization, and they weren’t interested in the many, many attempts she made to fit into the box they’d designed, in spite of Lola playing Sebastian truly to her application, which obviously they had accepted not that long ago. But here, with ‘mental health’, under the guise of concern when Lola came to them upset, they had their way out.
First things first. Exactly what Lola said in her post, her mental health should not be evaluated by ANYONE who isn’t a licensed professional or herself. Don’t make choices for another person based on what you believe is good for their mental health because you have no right to do that. It’s disgusting. Especially since I can honestly say that is a bunch of bull. It’s a cover for the real reason. Because if you actually cared for the mental health of a fellow player and a person who is supposed to be friends with you, you would check up on them in the THREE MONTHS since you forced them to leave something that they love. Or, if you believe the game to be affecting someone negatively, you do your best to change the game, not the player.
We all claimed to be a family. Our NIM family. And when Lola was asked to leave there were only about four people (excluding myself) who actually genuinely seemed to care. Four people reached out to Lola to see if she was alright. One of the four left the rp immediately following her expulsion based on the way she was treated. But Lola and I were hurt to find that none of the other players even wished her luck in her future endeavors or said goodbye. All I saw in the group ooc chat was “Oh we respect the admin’s decision, I know it had to be tough. Thank you for doing what you think is best for the game.” or something along those lines.
Yeah. That is what made me the most angry. No one spoke up. Either they were too afraid of being the next target of a head admin who claimed to value each player but consistently played favorites, or they agreed with the decision to summarily remove a player and hadn’t liked Lola or her Sebastian from the get-go. Or, maybe they just didn’t know what to say; I don’t know, because none of them talked to me, either. I spoke up and implored with one of the admins to reconsider or give me an explanation why she was being removed. Nothing worked. They had made their final decision which means they had already known they were going to ask Lola to leave. It should also be noted that during my conversation with one of the admins at this time I was told that, “Okay, I can understand that. Our reasonings don’t match up with what’s happening […]”
If any one of the players believed it was truly due to Lola’s mental health someone would have said something. If not to her then to me. Everyone there knows that Lola is not only my best friend in real life, but we live together. If they were too afraid to say something to Lola inquiring with me through Skype, ASK, PM etc. would have been fine. It now leads me to believe that no one actually cared about Lola and that she left. Which sucks so much because why would anyone pretend to be friends with someone else? Lola honestly and genuinely thought everyone was friends with her and when none of them contacted her…well, I’m certain she was hurt to discover that those she thought were her friends actually weren’t. It’s shameful.
The only time Lola’s mental health came up in conversation between the two of us was when she was to have a one on one conversation with the head admin. She wanted it to go well and she wanted to be truly heard because she felt she often wasn’t. Lola was anxious about it and said she had trouble sleeping the night before. Lola is typically an anxious person, this is nothing terribly out of the norm so I didn’t figure there was anything serious to worry about. Looking back, you should never be that nervous to speak to an admin of any RP. She never should have had reason to be nervous.
There are many more details about Lola’s journey in the post she made after she was asked to leave. Again you can read it HERE.
Overall I’m just disappointed in everything that happened. I feel heartbroken because I feel like I lost friends and I don’t even think they care. I care about everyone there and Lola did too. I don’t even know how to process it. And when I left, I had one player (aside from the admin and friend who still speaks with me and was my ship partner) message me and say that it was fun to write with me and that they hoped I’d keep writing. If I didn’t feel unwelcomed before, I do now.
If any of you wish to unfollow me, I can’t stop you. I won’t unfollow you. I’m not one to unfollow people, but I suppose I get it if you want to do that, whatever it is you’d like to do. It doesn’t erase what I said. And the admin team stating that “this matter is closed” doesn’t erase that it happened. There was nothing classy about anything they did and I was tired of hearing how many people believe or stated how classy it was for the way this was handled. (Also let’s be clear: I’m in no way saying this post is the most classiest thing either.) But maybe you need to look up the definition of the word “classy” because I’m sure you’re confused.
Goodbye.
