Speaking up about my Experience
Hi, it’s Si.
This post has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now, well before the last callout post that made QLP quit developing Restart Heart and abandon their accounts. At the time, I just wanted to be free of them and not get dragged into a situation I wasn’t apart of. Now that things have settled and I feel like a can breathe again, I feel like I’m at the point where I’m ready to talk about my experience with QLP over the course of the last two years.
I’ll be clear, this isn’t to drag them further, it’s in the past now, they’re gone, they can’t hurt me more than they already have. This is more just to get things off my chest and an attempt to reclaim my peace. Sitting with it isn’t helping my mental health, I want to move on in a way that feels right to me. I won’t be sharing screenshots unless it’s absolutely necessary, but there are multiple witnesses and people involved who have seen and heard the full story or have witnessed events first hand being in mutual discords together. Most of the evidence to what I’m about to detail was erased when Lily nuked their discord servers, but I still have access to a great many I took personally while venting and explaining the situation to friends close to the situation.
I’m going to be blunt: a lot of this is stupid.
The amount of time it had dragged on, how all of this started, how much it’s affected not only me, but other friends and people dragged into the situation, but at the same time, I don’t think anyone imagined just how bad things were under the surface.
I can’t exactly point to what started the strain between Lily and me specifically, but a big turning part in our friendship was them (not so kindly) asking me to stop making fan content of Kenneth and, later, a falling out due to an rp group between them, UnknownHermit, and myself. I won’t be going into too much detail on all that happened here, but what I will touch on is a disregard for comfort and boundaries, jealousy over my fan ship working when theirs crumbled over their own story plots and actions/reactions to other characters (some that heavily included SA and a plot that essentially equated to emotionally cheating on their character’s husband), disregarding my and my character’s feelings repeatedly- including telling me “I’m sorry I have more time to roleplay than you” when I brought up that I felt left behind and that it was effecting my character’s stories in favor for theirs/focus solely being in them due to how often I work (32-40 hours a week in a kitchen)…..
I could go on, it was a messy situation. I would like to be clear that in the initial situation (ie when it was just the three of us involved) there wasn’t any one person at “fault”, but Lily viewed themselves as the victim. This will be evident further on in my post, but there’s a few events I have to touch on before we get to that point. I would also like to mention that part of the reason this dragged on for so long was because Hermy and I were trying to figure the situation out in a mature manner while still trying to maintain what, at the time, we viewed as an important and close friendship.
Oh, how we were fucking wrong.
During what I would say would be the middle of all this, Lily dragged us into a community situation. I’m not going to beat a dead horse: that could’ve been handled better by everyone involved and I’m sorry for my part in the situation and the hurt it caused. Tensions were already high, and it was easy to get swept in to what seems like a personal vendetta against someone that was also a former friend of Lily’s looking back on it now. What became of that situation was a discord server created for devs and creators to interact together, talk about community issues, and, most importantly, talk their issues out with each other in a less public and hurtful way as seen with what happened with that situation. Unfortunately, I never got to use this section, but after countless tries to actually communicate with Lily, it became evident that it wouldn’t DO ANYTHING. Not for lack of trying and effort, but for Lily’s lack of being mature and accepting fault and accountability for their own actions- much like how they’ve ran their actions coming to light in these past few months.
Side tangent: Lily made that venting blog because Hermy and I had confronted them on a vague post they made about me, though they claimed it wasn’t. Fast forward to the callout post by @the-n109-zone and reading through the posts on PrincessofHallowness, I could point out a few posts that were directly referencing either myself or Hermy that weren’t shared in the screenshots. I can confirm that this was their account.
Now, the next part of the timeline is a little tricky: one because there’s the part where I believed that what happened between Hermy, Lily, and myself was still between the three of us, and the actual fact of the matter that Lily was going behind our backs and not only badmouthing the two of us, but also LYING about us and the situation (both straight up or by omission and twisting things so it sounded better in their favor). I didn’t find out about this until much later (November 2024), so we’ll start with the Summer of 2024 where a lot of this came to a head. THIS is where the fault turns onto Lily’s shoulders in my opinion and where the rp group situation becomes a separate issue to where we are now.
During the Summer of 2024, Hermy pulled away from Florescent Red Studios, and Lily took that as an end of their friendship when that, at least for that moment of time, wasn’t the case and was Hermy setting another boundary for herself. This is all I will say about this as it’s up to Hermy whether or not she wants to give her side of the story, but the context is relative for what came next.
I didn’t notice it at first or all at once, but, gradually, Lily started interacting with me less and less both publicly and in private after Hermy and them stopped being friends. When they did interact with me, it was a mix of love bombing and lashing out at me; which as you can imagine caused more strain and confusion for the people who witnessed it first hand, as well as putting an awkward sort of tension between me and the rest of the group. At the time, I feel like I couldn’t say anything or speak up about it to anyone and was still trying to talk and communicate with Lily, as well as be friendly and interact with each other as we had previously before the rp group imploded. That, and I didn’t want cause a whole stink with something that still might’ve had a chance of smoothing out. Once again, I was oh, oh so wrong.
At some point, I realized that I was only being pinged or dmed by Lily to talk about racial stuff, particularly BIPOC topics, issues and the like. It wasn’t like they hadn’t asked for my input before on such topics, but it was pretty noticeable by then that they only wanted to talk to me if they needed me to “educate” for them. I confronted them on this, but it wasn’t taken seriously.
Here’s where I’ll add some screenshots for context
Within 9 days of each other, Lily awkwardly pinged me in a chat I wasn’t apart of to talk about AAVE. I don’t talk about it a lot, but I’m extremely whitewashed and it’s a big insecurity for me to not be as connected to my identity as a Black nonbinary man. This is something Lily was aware of, so at the time it really hurt me and stood out to me just what exactly they were doing. Then, 9 days later, I get this dm:
This never rubbed me the right way, including making it on ME to give them suggestions in how to fix their actions. I don’t think I have to explain to you why that’s wrong, but just in case: if you’re not a part of a particular race or culture instead of making it another person’s job to teach you, learn from the countless resources at your disposal instead of falling back on us (the POC) to make sure it’s “right”. Also, for the love of goodness, ask yourself what YOU can do to make people feel more included and how you can better YOURSELF to understand others around you.
Not to mention: if you’ve read both of their Juneteenth posts, there are little to no changes in the actual text other than showcasing more spites of other POC characters they had besides Bess.
And it didn’t just stop there. I asked Lily for space at least four times and never got it, the most they’d give me was a week or two before essentially forcing me to talk to them before I was ready to. I had a lot of emotions I didn’t have the proper time to figure out and ONCE AGAIN I wanted to try and find some way things could either end peacefully, or a way to move on without causing this big issue. I started to slowly come around to the discord less often because of them and how they would constantly put down any attempt to talk to others about what I was interested in. This includes but not limited to:
One of Ziggy’s ocs Anteo
Homicipher
Degrees of Lewdity (which I get is not for everyone, but we made a separate channel for them to block as well as a few people making side accounts so Lily avoid engaging with the content/discussion: they kept engaging despite saying they didn’t like it , and that made people uncomfortable for those of us who did play the game.)
Love and Deepspace (highly speculative that the real reason they didn’t like the game is because I was into it, much like everything else on this list.)
I won’t lie, it felt very isolating. How do you speak up for yourself when you feel like you can’t? I’m not a dev (well, just yet), I’m a small fan artist with like- 150 followers at the most. A small Black creator with what was one of the loudest voices in the community glaring me down from behind their screen, almost BEGGING me to do something about it so they could flip it on my head becuase I felt like I couldn’t connect or be friends with anyone they were friends or acquaintances with. And I only say this NOW knowing what was actually going on behind my back.
Now, I will say, it’s hard to really break my spirit in the way they tried to. For one reason or another, I didn’t end up leaving the server, or the community probably like Lily wanted me to. I stayed to my own little section in the server where I knew they wouldn’t pop in, and eventually through playing LADs, I became really close friends with @indycinders purely out of simping for the 4 available boys at the time. I was also talking with @papaziggy-devblog back and forth about little things here and there, mostly because Ziggy noticed a lot of the tension and strain and asked me personally what was going on. It took a while for me to really open up about EVERYTHING with both of them. While Ziggy was aware there was strain, they didn’t know the full extent of it until I became closer with Cinders and finally came to the breaking point after hearing the FULL story.
In November of 2024, after feeling like Cinders was someone I could actually trust for the first time in months outside of Ziggy and Hermy, I broke down to her about Lily and the falling out that happened. While I was prepared for the worst to happen, what I wasn’t prepared for was the “I know.” Thinking about it now still makes me tear up: the last time I had cried that hard was when my dog passed away in 2018 after getting hit by a car. That was the moment I felt myself break and acknowledged all the pain and hurt I had been feeling because of what Lily was putting me through.
And then the pain got worse when Cinders shared what Lily had been doing in private.
The whole time I had been suffering in silence, Lily was twisting the situation in DMs and private groups to make Hermy and I look like the villains, both in the rp group situation and what came after. Lily lied about why I stopped engaging/talking to people I would often chat with daily, lied about crossing our boundaries and going as far to say we were “over exaggerating” when trying to communicate with them about our issues with them, their writing, what have you.
Lily went as far to run to two other Indigenous POC when I confronted them about being a token to vent about the situation and essentially try and have them say that I was “wrong” for doing so and was dming mutual friends to stop playing games that they played and enjoyed talking with me about.
Being real and emotional for a second: can you even imagine how fucked up that is to realize? That you had the INKLING of an idea that this was the case but no proof to back it up?
It was a wave of both relief and panic: okay, I know it’s true, but what am I supposed to do about it? The most I could do was vent at the time, and I’ll forever be grateful for Cinders, Hermy, Ziggy, and a few other friends for becoming my biggest support group in a time where I felt like I had little to nothing. To this day, I still don’t know who else Lily might have done this with, but I was happy to be in a safe space finally and stayed there so I can process…. All of this.
So, what came of it?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Before the callout post, we were wrapping our brains trying to figure out how things could end quietly without a major blowup. And while I DID eventually end the friendship with Lily, I did it while not addressing all of the issues or standing up for myself. I’ll admit- I was tired and I folded instead of confronting them about what I knew at this point of time, and I’m kicking myself for it now and making up for it by sharing my experience.
SS of that conversation for clarity and just…highlighting that I was still giving them more grace than they showed me or ever deserved.
Keep in mind: I KNOW they’ve been pulling the wool over my eyes at this point. I know they’re pulling the nice routine to save face for their narrative. I just wanted to be done with it. But I wasn’t. They kept putting me down, they kept trying to turn our mutual friends against me even after we stopped being friends and I gave them plenty of space in mutual communities and servers.
Lily really thought people wouldn’t notice: both those who knew about the situation and were involved and those who didn’t know anything at all were starting to have their doubts even if they didn’t explicitly say my name.
I wanted to avoid this, having to make one of these posts. It’s takes a lot of vulnerability, accountability for your own actions, and knowing that opinions won’t be in your favor 100% of the time even if you’re telling your own truth. But….at least I’m doing that: telling the truth. I’m not hiding, I’m not running from my past self, I’m trying to be open and honest.
I wanted to be honest about where I’ve been and why I keep flipping back and forth between being motivated to make a comeback and then going silent for months, why my mental health has been so low lately, why I haven’t been creating as much as I have in the past, and that couldn’t happen unless I opened up about the abuse of my trust, friendship, and identity as a person of color.
I wanted to be honest about why I’ve stopped talking to many people I considered to be good friends because of how Lily was attempting to poison so many mutual friendships.
I wanted to be honest:
I have not been okay for so long that I’m finally starting to remember what feeling normal feels like now that they’re gone. It sounds harsh to me to say even with everything I’ve been through: but I can’t say I’m not glad that they’re gone and that someone else made a post before I was ready to. Putting their game aside, I really want to convey how badly this was effecting not only me, but Hermy, Cinders, Ziggy, and others close to them that weren’t aware of what was going on behind the scenes.
Personally: I don’t want Lily to ever come back, but unfortunately they’ve left not only their community, but particularly me and a few mutual friends, in need of something more than an apology: Lily owes us a game or a proper refund. I doubt either would happen, but it’s infuriating that they’ve abandoned Restart Heart because they can’t be a fucking adult. Continuing to be raw and allow myself to speak openly now that I’ve gotten through the bulk of this post, we’re owed SOMETHING. A final product or refund to those of us who have paid into their patreon, particularly those of us who paid for a cameo in their game, are owed something more than “I’m pulling the game, here’s an unfinished product and a spoiler” while still taking our money and running.
I’ve attempted to get a refund for the $50 paid for my in game cameo ONLY, not the additional payments of $5-$20 tier content , just to be tossed between patreon and my bank telling me to contact Lily, the seller, when that is not possible. Even if I DID and they saw the message, they wouldn’t respond as I’ve been informed that they’ve ghosted anyone they considered close to them.
Now, putting that all into context, and being one of the people close to the project and its development near the end of its lifespan….what can I say? I wish I could do something to make up for Lily’s failures and to give the community some sort of closure as someone who contributed to RH’s writing both in the main game, the dlc, and side game that I was supposed to be a part of.… but…. no amount work experience, both professionally and as a hobby, is worth being treated like this.
Nothing is worth being treated like this and being forced to quiet yourself and become someone’s attack dog.
Some of you wanted clarity, some of you want to trust in Lily still, but I can say for a fact that they have tarnished and burned any trust I have for them. I’ll be more civil than they have been to me and hope that one day they grow as a person, but that’s it. That’s all I’m willing to give them at this point.
I’m tired. I’m done.
….
I miss my friends.
I miss having fun.
I miss creating.
I miss the person I used to be.
I’m done being quiet. I want to do my best and enjoy creating and sharing my ideas again and I’m fucking done letting this cloud hang over my head.
I don’t expect anyone to forgive me or suddenly be friendly towards me again, but I at least want the chance to move on and be myself without this weird sort of pressure over my neck to keep me quiet anymore. I want to be seen for me, flaws and all, and not an extension of someone using my knowledge and words to push and add weight their own.
And, if I can…. I’d just like to reconnect with my friends again and others I’ve enjoyed talking to over the years. I’d also just like to move forward as a creator both in the yandere space and in other areas of interest. Hopefully by speaking up and saying something, I’ll actually feel like I’ll move on.
Even now as I prepare to hit the post button, I’m filled with clarity and a sense of relief instead of anxiety for the first time in a long time. And….if you made it this far….thanks for listening from the bottom of my heart. ❤️
One last note: don’t harass Lily’s former friends, that’s not fucking cool. We want to move on, if someone wants to talk about their experiences, then they will. Don’t force people to do anything they don’t want to. I’m only speaking up because I never got the chance to and it’s against everything that I stand and fight for to be silenced in the way I’ve allowed myself to be. Do not harass anyone, just….send a little loving and understanding if you can to those applicable.
