most of the people i actually know that will insist that romance is more important or more meaningful than friendship have a pattern of moderate to severe dysfunction in their romantic relationships and/or friendships. whereas the couples that i know that seem to have, at least from an outside perspective, healthy and successful relationships usually have many friendships outside of the romantic relationship.
so honestly, when someone is really insistent on a hierarchical view of the importance of romantic relationships in one's life over all other relationships, i'm usually assuming they're a bad partner and/or a bad friend.
My personal experience with the moderators of New Tideland, specifically, Gamebird
I would like to thank Haze for their bravery in coming forward with their experience with the moderators of New Tideland. In support of Haze, I would like to share my experience with being plagiarized by Gamebird, who is one of the most prominent moderators of the server and the owner of a large Murderbot community here on tumblr.
I don't want this to come across as an attack on anyone who is just casually a member of NT and enjoys its community. I am sure there is a lot to love in that community for many people. However, I think this occurs in spite of, not because of, its leadership.
I would like to emphasize that all of the events I am going to describe happened after Gamebird became a moderator of NT in September 2024. I don't want anyone to harass Gamebird or the other NT mods about this, or anything like that. If she was just another member of the fandom, I would complain to my friends and we would block each other and that would be it. But she continually places herself in positions of authority and has, at least in her interactions with me, abused it. So I think her behavior, and the behavior of the other moderators of NT in dismissing it, is relevant in evaluating if you think NT's leadership can be trusted to nurture a safe environment for everyone, or only for themselves and their friends.
For context: I do not regularly participate in the Murderbot fandom on Tumblr, but I have been a regular on The Murderbot Diaries 2.0 discord server under my chosen name, Prism, since December 2020. You may also be familiar with my fanfiction under the pen name "mensah" (formerly "lick") on AO3. I joined NT shortly after it was founded in 2022, but never posted more than a handful of messages there. I was peripherally aware of Gamebird because of her presence in 2.0, and we had mutual friends. However, we had no relationship prior to this incident.
Although I was not an active member on NT, I would occasionally search my name and the names of some of my fics there, as I do on other servers including 2.0. I would do this because I would sometimes find conversations where people had discussed my fics, and I always liked reading those conversations. While doing this in late December 2024, I found a message Gamebird had sent in NT which included a word document in which she had collected various timelines of the series.
When I saw this, I remembered that a few days previously, I had seen Gamebird promoting a reference she published on AO3 attempting to construct a timeline of The Murderbot Diaries books. When I looked at it, I discovered that the A/N credited me as Prism, among a handful of other individuals. I was initially miffed because while Prism is my chosen name, it cannot be used to locate me on AO3 or Tumblr, so it was not an appropriate way to credit whatever contribution I had made to the work.
Upon closer investigation, however, I discovered that the section of the timeline covering books 1-4 was largely directly copy-pasted from a timeline published here on tumblr by another fan, and a timeline that I had posted on 2.0 in 2023 (1, 2). The extent of the copy-pasting can be seen in these images:
I confronted Gamebird in the comments at the time, and she expressed that she was glad that she had "found me". In light of the message that I had originally seen on NT, I realized that she had essentially been copy-pasting various fandom resources into a private document on her computer with only minimal notes about the sources. It appeared that when she decided to collate the sources into a single timeline on AO3 she made no effort to trace the original source or contact the creators before publishing on AO3.
I ended up demanding co-author status on the work, since I had literally written a part of it. I did not receive an apology from her for her behavior until over a month later, when I disclosed to the 2.0 server mod who had mediated the conflict that she had not apologized to me.
Ever since this happened, whenever she promoted or talked about this timeline, she talks about the timeline as if it was a collaborative effort rather than plagiarized work she was forced to give co-credit for. When I called her out for doing this in the past on tumblr, she asked me to keep things private.
Towards the end of 2025, Gamebird started being kind of weird about the fact that I have different usernames while talking about me on NT, including using me as an example of an individual on 2.0 who "change[s] their name[] often" (1, 2). This pissed me off because I interpreted it as an attempt to justify her failure to appropriately credit me. It was also not true: I have not changed my tumblr URL since 2018. I have consistently used the display name Prism or Pris (a nickname) on 2.0. I changed my AO3 username exactly once since joining the fandom, in May 2025. Also, even outside of our personal history, I thought it was just an inappropriate way for her to talk about another member of the fandom.
When I opened a ticket to try to talk to the other NT moderators about my concerns regarding her ongoing behavior around this conflict, I was completely dismissed. I was told that in the future I should "self-regulate" and settle personal grievances outside of the server, which is very funny in light of NT's recent policy change, in which they have started disciplining fans for behavior in interpersonal disputes occurring outside of the server.
My entire dispute with Gamebird could have been avoided if she had simply respected other members of the fandom enough to reach out to me privately about my timeline before publishing it on AO3. If she had, I probably would've told her that it was okay, or possibly asked to lightly edit the writing because what I had posted on 2.0 was a rough personal reference, and I probably would not have requested co-author status. Instead, she barreled forward without even trying to figure out who I was, tried to cover it up, and continuously promoted the timeline despite me being very clear that I wanted to forget its existence.
I would like to reiterate that every single one of these events happened while Gamebird was an NT moderator. After I finally left NT this morning, I discovered that they quickly banned me. As you can imagine, it fucking sucks to get plagiarized by a moderator of the largest Discord server in the fandom, and then have her hold a grudge against you because you refused to roll over and let her do what she wanted.
