two people in a 70 person server discuss the SU movie in the general chat channel, using spoiler tags because it had just recently been released. this lasts five posts.
09/07/2019.
alyson comes into the general chat channel and says man, isnāt it a bummer that SU is n*zi apologia and racist and actively harmful?
Donnie says yes, itās harmful, but drop the n*zi comment because RS is jewish (alyson does not, then or the other two times donnie asks, despite donnie being jewish himself). He later says he doesnāt care about SU at all
Synth says itās understandable that people would drop the show because of poor handling or the racism issues, but agrees that n*zi is too far when thereās genuine propaganda out there
Beta says yes, the writers could have handled things better, but reducing the message of the show to ān*zi goodā is a deliberate misinterpretation
A fourth person comes in briefly to say they also donāt care about SU and that this should probably be in the discourse channel.
About halfway through the conversation, after his second request to stop calling SU apologia was met with a sourceless insistence that other jewish people criticized it (though alyson did not specify whether they used the term n*zi apologia), Donnie told her she was taking this very personally, which Alyson met with āAm I? I said a thing, said it was unpopular, and left it. and then got swarmed?ā
At this point she held ~46% of the conversation.
She then abruptly left, saying, ālike. Hooooboy, there's so much assuming and passion and defensiveness going on here, so I guess I'll leave since I've seen this all before and know for a fact that no one is going to let it rest.ā
She held 41% of the final conversation. Everyone who weighed in was either explicitly open to criticizing SU or completely indifferent, and were simply asking her not to refer to the work of a Jewish nb woman as n*zi apologia.
09/10/2019
Alyson writes a post. The introduction is more or less āif you uncritically like SU, unfollow meā and goes on to say she underestimated how few people in the neopets fandom recognize its harmfulness. She says sheād been thinking about leaving the Neolodge discord for a while, but her mind was made up on the 3rd when she saw "a lot of hype and support" (5 posts), four full days before she posted in the general chat. She says she "was swarmed by questions asked by people who didn't want to hear [her] answers." (there were two questions asked of her: ādid you just kind of want to get mad at us for enjoying steven universe?ā and āwere you venting?")
She says that SU is her ālitmus testā of sorts, implying--possibly by accident--that she was then testing the Neolodge by dangling some SU-discoursey bait.Ā
The post was tagged #the problem isnāt liking a thing and #it's denying anyone from not-liking it for very valid reasons
Except the problem was demonstrated to be specifically that she was asked not to use a particular term to describe that not-like
7 months later, 4/16/2019
There is a Neolodge board on our own neopets.gov. Alyson shows up and is polite & sociable until more people that she recognizes filter in. She neomails hollis to broach the subject of what had happened in september, saying āfrom what i remember it was mostly synth who was very reactionary and aggressively posting at me because i criticised steven universeā which, if youāll review the logs, is both not about synth, who only posted twice (probably an honest mistake), but also grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the incident. Over the next day or so she and Hollis discuss the nature of the lodge and what transpired in September. Hollis emphasizes that the Neolodge has never been a place for bigots or their sympathizers, and Alyson goes radio silent.
4/24/2019
Alyson writes a new post. It tells a different narrative than we see play out in the logs. Her summary of events is as follows:
So, when wondering on the chat if anyone else was critical of the franchise, instead the chat suddenly sped up and i was swarmed by a bunch of anti-criticism fans who almost immediately -instead of reading my beginning attempts to elaborate on where i was coming from- posted over and over again that rebecca sugar is a marginalized voice and as such, immune to criticism, and how dare I insinuate a jewish woman of writing nazi apologia.
To reiterate, she began a discussion. Every person who responded was either openly critical of SU or indifferent. They were not suggesting RS is immune to criticism because sheās marginalized; they were in fact largely agreeing with the criticisms that Alyson raised, but asking her to be more conscious of the impact her choice of terms could have (and in fact was having).
I (a neurodivergent, mentally ill, pansexual aromantic woman, aka also a marginalized voice) was talked over and treated as if i ate babies. Obviously, I left the neolodge discord after that.
Again, she held 41% of the conversation--and by her own admission had already been planning to leave the Neolodge, and had thrown down this final ālitmus testā despite not wanting to engage with the results.
Now, obviously marginalization isnāt a contest. Thereās no āI have more problemsā or āI have worse problemsā that will ever get us anywhere constructive. As I said in my own reply to her post, this was not a matter of RS being untouchable because sheās marginalized, but of Alysonās behavior when asked not to draw the comparison between RSās work and literal N*zi apologia.
Hollis refused to read and think about what i had said and the information i linked to, despite apparently going back in the discord chat and viewing the whole mess, where i had also laid out information to back up my observations. Ā Instead, my voice talked over, my words and concerns discarded, I was treated as if I had committed some heinous act, and if i had changed as a person then maybe they might let me back in to the neolodge.
Now being privy to the entire conversation, I can assure anyone reading this that Hollis read & thought about everything Alyson said very seriously. We had an in-depth and nuanced discussion, and ultimately realized that this was not simply a matter of whether or not SU is a poorly handled cartoon or full-on apologia. It was a matter of Alysonās unwillingness to engage in a discussion she herself began, her repeated refusals to respect the comfort and wishes of our Jewish members, and her later misconstruals of the conversation as a ābombardmentā.
Alyson insists she did not call RS a n*zi, and that critiquing the show is not equivalent to doing so, but unfortunately ended that thought with this:
Words mean things: look up apologia.
Now, Iāve already pointed this out, but apologia means āa formal written defense of oneās opinions or conduct.ā Thus, every time Alyson has insisted SU is actual, literal N*zi apologia, she means that a Jewish nonbinary woman conceived of and executed an explicit defense of fascism, n*zis, the H*locaust, regardless of how involved she was or wasnāt in the production of the show itself.
Personally, I choose to believe that Alyson herself is unaware of the definition, and instead meant that SU makes excuses for fascism, or alludes to n*zis, or much gentler (if still harmful) language. I choose to believe that sheās conflating it with an apology, and simply didnāt follow her own advice.
The Neolodge is home to actual children/minors/underage people and most of the people in the incident were younger than 21. That is children. Ā I was getting annoyed at young non-adults.Ā
This is blatantly false. The Neolodge has always been a minor-free space, and thereās been discussion of upping the minimum age to 20. That Alyson herself is 30 may have skewed her perception, but as you can see in our response to this angry anon, we have always been concerned with the protection of minors & the promotion of a safe, comfortable atmosphere.
Alyson goes on to say that she had liked & trusted Hollis, and this came with no prior warning--presumably because Hollis had been polite and even friendly when she came to our board, and they hadnāt interacted much over the previous months since her exit from the discord.
So if youāre like me, and donāt put up with bullshit, and refuse to lie down and let bigotry get further footholds into western culture and be lauded for it, consider staying away from the neolodge and users like hollis and synthaphone
I still donāt quite understand how we got here, tbh. People standing up against a stark refusal to respect someoneās comfort as a Jewish person has somehow been skewed to mean theyāre the bigots, and āwestern cultureā is in danger, specifically from this gay nb & their nefarious lesbian pal, who spoke the least of anyone in the conversation.
I canāt speak to whatās going through her head right now. I donāt even know if she read the replies enough to know she was spreading misinformation about the Lodgeās age restrictions, let alone her (hopefully accidentally) drawing an obliquely antisemetic portrait of RS. Iām not even mad at her at the moment so much as confused. I genuinely donāt understand her rationale or what she thinks would motivate us to do the things she says weāve done. I donāt think sheās a bad person, or even that her actions would be unfair if the situation were what sheās purported it to be.
But the fact of the matter is, it isnāt. She tried to start a fight seven months ago and has been hanging onto it since, convinced that she was in the right, never considering the express opinions of the people she claimed were so passionate about the show she so loathes. Sheās attempting to drag Hollisās name through the mud because they were kind enough to give her a chance to explain her side of things & she squandered it by instead parroting the talking points of the video we had all watched back in September, when she originally posted it.
Sheās throwing Synth in for good measure, because theyāre the only person she could be bothered to identify.
Itās not a true account of events, she made no effort to have a good-faith conversation at any point (particularly about her own behavior), and frankly itās unfair. Itās easy to dump snippets of DMs and announce that youāre blocking anyone who disagrees with you, sure--it can even be good for you. But in this case itās more of what we saw all those months ago in the discord, when she tried to stir the pot and left after scarcely 30 posts had gone by; itās cowardice. Itās a way to frame the narrative in such a way that she can maintain her illusion of moral superiority, secure in the knowledge that everyone who has criticized her or her behavior is a bigot and and writes n*zi "apologiaā apologia.
Sheās isolating herself from the community one group at a time, and I still donāt know why, because she wonāt talk to me about it. She wonāt talk to any of us about anything that isnāt SU, and I donāt care about SU. I care about her & her motivations, and Iām starting to accept Iām never going to truly know either.
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