I've been talking to Moon a lot these past few weeks and she keeps asking me what my friend likes for the date. I've been asked about favorite places, colors, flowers; and I just have to tell her cuz I don't want to be an asshole. But like THATS THE GIRL I LIKE AND I'M GIVING HER ADVICE FOR A RELATIONSHIP WITH MY BEST FRIEND. It Lowkey just hurts because I find this girl so interesting and beautiful, but I can't do anything. And I probably couldn't do anything if they don't turn out because who would date their friends ex?! So anyways: doomed yuri.
Okay, to those of you who know me, you know this kind of posts are not my style and I am mostly quiet and minding my little pink corner with Imrrick fics and such. But there have been things happening in the past few months that have affected my mental health and I think I've been quiet for long enough about it.
This is about to get pretty ugly and I chose not to censor or cut the messages that are relevant for this discussion, only to cover some names for the sake of maintaining a level of respect that hasn't been extended to me.
I will state from the start that I don't expect anyone to take any side or to do anything, this is me sharing my experience and it is cathartic.
I expect people now to come with stories about how amazing the server is, to discredit me and all that jazz and I honestly don't care. This is my side of the story and believe me, it's a summary of everything going on. My intention is not to make anyone pick sides or to villainize people (which is why I covered names and pictures) - everyone has shit going on in their lives. I hope the people I talked about recognize themselves and straighten their act and leave the petty power games (who died and made you kings and queens?) where they belong, in high-school and middle grade.
And, above all else, I hope you stop making a generally fun and supportive fandom toxic by treating it like a business or your little cult.
So buckle up, this is going to be a long story.
I've been in the RQ server for almost two years, give or take and I've been active there as a member, especially in the theory and the fanfiction channels.
The first thing you notice when you join the later is this peer pressure around a certain writer and their fics that are treated like the holy gospel and it all got to the point that these fics are some sort of "mandatory" reading - not in the sense that you are kicked out if you don't read them, but you are certainly pushed aside if you don't praise them or their writer. It is obvious in the different treatment of writers - those who are in the "inner circle" of the mods get a ton of attention and spotlight, whereas others are not even talked about.
Now that the context for this (first) issue is established, on to how it impacted me.
I liked the writing of this fanfic writer and tried to ignore all this pressure surrounding their works. Then I didn't like one of their fics and, because we were somewhat close, I told them that I won't finish reading it because I felt uncomfortable and it was not my kind of story. And I was not the only one because along with another friend we came with the idea of writing an AU of this AU because we came up with a plot to make our favorite couple get their shit together (an idea that we abandoned because we felt that the writer didn't like it and we realised it was not our place to overstep their creative domain, no hard feelings or resentment on our part)
I made it known from the start that I am mostly interested in one ship or certain characters (as my works will show) and based on this preference, a joke was born that I "hated" any other ship with the two characters. It was just that, a joke. I have read and enjoyed other ships and I never pressured anyone to write a certain way their stories (if anyone ever talked to me and felt that way, it was completely unintentional and I apologise, it was just for joke value if anything - I am putting this disclaimer here because one of the mods allegedly received DMs from people accusing me of that).
I would like to point out here that there were actual people who pushed their preferences and thoughts on others, like the writer I mentioned at the beginning. Some of my friends told me they DMed them to pressure them to like a certain character and being generally uncomfortable to talk to. I have examples but because these are the stories of other people, I won't give ss of them.
This brings me to the first crack. Someone apparently didn't know about this joke being just a "haha funny" thing to say and, while I was not online (they also knew I was not awake and not part of the conversation - which was about Garrick/Mira and someone made the joke "haha, Alex will kill me for shipping this") they made this comment:
It's not a ss of the entire conversation, because it was followed by other comments from the same person that felt awful to wake up to and felt like a huge blow to my image and reputation.
I won't be sharing bits from my conversation with this person (whom I DMed to discuss this and the whole issue was not really solved but we agreed to leave it at that), but I will share the following messages from other people who noticed the same stuff:
And I did bring it up to the mods. I reached out to two of the mods I felt comfortable sharing this with and they tried their best to discuss this with the others, but in the end, because this person was close to the mod team, nothing really happened, they weren't even warned for the whole incident and the announcement they posted afterwards felt directed to ME rather than the person who made these comments (although the people I reached out to pointed that out before it was posted, it was disregarded completely).
There was faked concern from some mods and gaslighting and I debated leaving the server back then, but I had friends in the server and I was on the Wiki team (this will be important later on), so I just stayed in one corner and avoided them for the most part.
Until I couldn't.
I was already hearing the stories of others about their own bad experiences in the server, dealing with the same people and the same toxicity, gaslighting and manipulation. Some were kicked out for speaking their mind and others chose to just quietly leave or avoid the server because of the same issues. At some point we even had a mod reach out to some of us to tell us not to talk to someone they kicked off the team (acting as if that person committed some unbelievable betrayal or something, when in fact they only happened to not agree with this behaviour and had different opinion - how could they?)
Anyway, I got a taste of what you get for having different opinions myself. (It all sounds like a stupid highschool drama, but I swear I am not making anything up)
Some of you might remember I was one of the organisers of the fic exchanges hosted by the RQ and we have crazy stories from that time too. There was this idea of making a round robins fic in the server and I didn't like the idea - firstly because it didn't feel like an idea brought to be discussed as a team but rather as an "I decided we should do it" and I was stupid enough to speak my mind. I do have the ss to that conversation as well, but it's a separate issue and this is already getting long (anyone who wants to see them, feel free to ask) - the point is that me saying no (mind you, it was just my personal stand, not me taking a final decision) led to another mod starting to talk left and right about how "bone deep sad" she feels just thinking about the idea and unbelievable victimisation all around.
After that, some of my friends left the server because they had their own problems with different members of the server and irl and I remained mostly for my Wiki work - which proved to be a wrong choice because I felt unwelcome, targeted in certain comments made in public threads and at some point I got a server warning for pointing out to someone that making petitions for writers to finish their fics is awful because it puts too much pressure and stress on the writer (who happened to be my friend who left the server by that point).
And now, the final straw. These two friends who'd left the servers had been on the Wiki mod team and they didn't announce that they were leaving for their own peace and quiet. I didn't announce their absence either because 1) their privacy is important to me 2) the wiki team is not active at all and 3) I felt the entire server as a hostile environment (and if the issue was with those in leadership, why bother open a ModMail?)
I will attach the conversation so you can see for yourself what went on (there are a lot of pics, so bear with me, this is the IMPORTANT BIT):
And before people come at me with their own accusations, I own up to everything I said and I can bring MANY more examples of just how things are behind the scenes of the RQ. And I do admit that my last last two messages in the server were "That's big of you considering you are never active on the server" and a Fuck you emoji with Imogen.
I loved working on the Wiki because I genuinely love the series and I would have come up with these workarounds for anyone on the wiki team. And I especially enjoyed talking to the fan artists, you guys are amazing and I am sorry you are not given the attention you deserve in the server.
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read all this. And if I am not a persona non-grata, please don't be stranger, I am still very much active here, on Discord and on Ao3, this doesn't impact any of those things <3
With Rinoa's possible return on the horizon, Cloud reflects on all he's learnt, how much he's grown, and what he has to loose should she go back on her word and Out him before he's ready to confess.
It's all coming to a head as the investigation post-school incident (Overload) approaches it's conclusion.
Featuring: Squall being a nerd, Xion (cat) wanting to go on a murder spree, and Quistis scheming.
