Post by Zou ۞ on Jul 25, 2018 6:04:53 GMT -5
Dear Bleach: Online World,
We're finally here. It has been a wild, wild ride since I first started this forum over 8 years ago. It's been a long time coming, probably a long time overdue too what with my longer and longer absences. I am finally, officially, declaring my retirement from this site. In three weeks I will have my last day on this site. I have a few changes I'd like to make before then that I hope will better your experiences after I'm gone. I had to return to Europe for a work emergency in the past five days, so I have not been able to use Discord, but I'll be on the Discord on Monday to answer final questions and concerns. I'll bounce around for the remaining time until then, and then that will be that.
If this is the only part you care to know, you don't have to read on. Below this will be my farewell message where I discuss my time here, this site's origins and intent, my feelings and goodbyes, why I am leaving, and some advice I have for members and for staff.
Wow. 8 years. How time flies. I was in my undergraduate program when I started this website. Today I sit in a quaint Parisian cafe for breakfast as I reminisce on how we got here. Seems so long ago.
The idea behind this site originated long before I discovered proboards and began to write the code and rules for Bleach: Online World. In 2006 I was a teenager in the middle of high school. We didn't have all of the same fancy streaming services for anime back in the day, so I had to use the internet to find a way to illegally watch Naruto. The website I stumbled upon was called EnglishNaruto. It was dubbed Naruto (I was a dub watching noob back in the day) and was hosted on a website called Freewebs, a build your own website place where someone had taken the time to literally encode all of the original Naruto episodes up to 139, the official end of the original series before the filler. There was a chatbox there, and that was where I first made my appearance. My username back then was "Corrupted Sasuke," which is why some who knew me then continue to refer to me as "Sasuke" privately, such as Sana or Rin.
On this chat, sometimes we would adapt personas and roleplay as these personas. Back then our roleplaying was based entirely on PvP interaction and was in the chat. It was called "speed RP" because a lot of your ability to do it was centered around how quickly you could type out your offensive actions. Doing so quickly enough negated an opponent's ability to counter. I've always been fast typing, so I was one of the best. As the community expanded, people started to create their own websites to indicate factions of roleplayers, with EnglishNaruto as the central hub where all people met and socialized. I got to know Sana, Rin, and Jazz (Jin's player) on that website, among others. My first faction was called "Darkness Country," a silly name I know, but my origin point for this site. As Corrupted Sasuke, I was the leader, and I prized our ability as the best PVPers in the community. Sure enough, rivals appeared. I was responsible for creating some of those rivals. There was a guy who went by the username of Naruto and another who went by Analand, an Orochimaru style player. I eventually gave them Darkness Country, at that point the largest faction with the most members, and joined an Akatsuki type faction called Huroku.
A lot happened then, but long story short the community started to die. This wasn't the end of our time together though. At some point we decided to replace the slow, lagging chatbox of our site with a chat widget called Xat, which was also its own website with many chat communities separated by title and subject matter. After EnglishNaruto started to die out we migrated to Xat, and formed new communities there. We reached out to other chats and started to find new people to play with.
Soon we encountered a different kind of roleplayer. These were called "para" or paragraph roleplayers, and they operated in a format where there was a word minimum in order to play. The highest tier at the time was s20, or speed 20, where an action required at least 20 words before you could post it. This format was still speed, but was also para. It was the "semi-para" format. Para was reserved for the likes of forums. One day I happened across one of those forums. It was called NarutoForumRP, NFRP for short. Until the last few years it was the biggest single subject anime roleplaying site on the internet. Today that is no longer the case.
I enjoyed my time there, but there were so many people already that I couldn't grasp a sense of community. I missed my Xat days. So I started my own site and recruited my Xat people. The first one was a Star Wars site, though I don't remember the name now. My character was Darth Egocide, a powerful Sith Master who sought to revive the mighty legend Darth Bane. We had a lot of fun on there, but the system was imperfect. My next try lasted a little longer. It was called Shinobi Shinigami Roleplay, or SSRP. Again, the friends of my Xat days, Rin and Sana and Jazz followed me there.
This is where the modern version of our characters first started to be born. Sana only chatted, but Jazz created his NamelessK persona there and that was the origin point for Jin Yamada and the ideas behind his persona, Anarchy. Zouma Santeku originated there, as did Rin Minamimoto's technical original form.
That site was also imperfect and so died. My next project was more ambitious. While admin for SSRP I had been playing on a website called Bleach Gotei to learn more. I enjoyed their system, but their staff were abusive of their power and the community wasn't welcoming. The rules were also still imperfect. So I made my next site as SSRP started to die from lack of new members.
This time, I named the proboards title RpforumBleach and I flooded the site and the internet with references to this so that we would appear high up on the google search. Bleach Gotei had a stat system, which is where I got the idea, and I decided to do the same. Unlike them, who only had four stats with a maximum possible 300 in each, I made a stat system with higher numbers and more stats, and I used this to balance a PvP and adventure based system that was the first of its kind as far as I know for online anime roleplay sites of this sort.
That was eight years and four months ago. Jazz, Sana, and Rin followed me, and so did others I'd picked up along the way in SSRP. We had a good starting base. I was soon able to recruit more people, which increased our google ranking, which increased how easily people found us, which expanded membership more.
I was so excited at how quickly we grew! The system wasn't perfect, as we didn't have stat limits, Types, or half the races we do now. My ability to DM was flawed and my NPCs were too overpowered, and my storytelling needed work. It wasn't a great site yet, but it was a good one. I was also able to staff it myself due to the size of it.
As time passed, we got some regulars I got along with very well. Ray was one of those regulars. A player named Kid was too. We got someone named Naga, and at some point we eventually got the likes of Z and Royce, great members themselves. On the side I was part of a Xat group called Duel_Academy too, where we used text and an honor system to play yugioh against one another. This was before fancy things like Dueling Network came out, so it was the best we got. That was where I recruited Kento, who joined up. He and Kid were the two I spoke with the most for some time on this site, with Sana and Rin being close seconds.
It was a good time, despite some friction. Kid was overtly racist and problematic, but I hadn't learned enough about the world to understand the ramifications of that yet. I was lenient in those days. It was easy to get certain behavior past me sometimes. Eventually Kid and Kento making moderators for this website. Royce was one for a time too before he stepped down.
Wow did we have some great members at the start! Characters such as Okusa Shogen, Bokuga Sayuri, Saix Shinra, Adalo De-Mona. That was when they started to appear. Kuroi, my first character here, got along well with Asuka and played a lot of threats with Kid's character, Octava Espada, Cierro.
As time moved on and I got busier and busier, and I graduated college, I started to appear less. Kento had done well with his newest OC, Sozen, so I made him a mod. Kid had done well with Ranmyaku and Shade, his characters at the time, so I made him one too. Other mods came and went, such as Naga.
We had a lot of great regulars. Ray, Jazz, Clock, Rin, Naga, Kid, Kento, Sana, Z. Kid entered college while on the site, and met his freshman roommate, who was Kyo. He introduced Kyo to this site, and I'm glad Kyo has been an enduring member long after Kid is gone.
Kid was eventually banned for, well, being awful to everyone. Racist, homophobic, all of it. Many of you know this story. I liked our players and loved how the site continued to grow. We added Types, new stat functions, new races, new systems, new plotlines, and so much more. We went through a lot of main staff to get to the triumvirate of Kento, Z, and Kyo. I'll say it now. It was an honor and a privilege to work with all of them. I appreciate the current staff. To me, who was still very active in that era, the team of Kento, Z, and Kyo was the best staff team this site has ever beheld.
It was a perfect balance. Z was the strictest, known for being the harshest grader, but he helped mellow out what would have otherwise been very overpowered characters. Kento was the most lenient, and dedicated most of his staff time to private one on ones with many members to help them flesh out plot and powers. Many of you today will remember Z and Kento doing these things. Kyo was in the middle, and bridged the gap between Z and Kento, who didn't always see eye to eye back then. Then my graduate program picked up. And Rin left. And I entered a long term relationship. And I had to move around a bunch. My activity dropped, and anyway without Rin or Kid, two of the main players with whom my RPCs had interacted, my own RPCs couldn't really thrive any further with their stories cut off. I was fine with that. Kento and Z spearheaded a lot of wonderful changes. They were both better DMs than I ever was, and their stories were really fun to play in. I felt comfortable being less and less present.
When I got married and after my father died, I felt confident that I could take as long as I needed and this site would be the same fun place I'd envisioned it being when I'd first started it. But I started to notice something whenever I checked back in. There was friction between members and mods. My star team was starting to burn out. Z, especially, was being burnt out by toxic behavior from members challenging his rulings and constantly demanding more of him. Kento was getting increasingly frustrated with people flooding his private messages with dozens of calls for help simultaneously. Kyo both got married and also hit a snag in real life and became less present, the same as me. I had to instigate Royce as a disciplinary mod, bring in other mods. A breath of fresh air came when Kento recruited ZK to the site. He has always had a good attitude and is a stellar creative. We also gained wonderful mods in the form of John and future mods in the form of good attitudes from people like Quinn. Members such as Dancer have always helped make this experience great too.
Ray will remember a lot of it. Back in those days, he instigated a lot of conflict with the staff and was very difficult to handle. I don't mention that to point fingers, but rather to show how people can change. Today Ray is reasonable, fair, and acts very professional as staff. He is one of the best mods this site has seen, and I don't think anyone would ever have thought they'd say that about him five years ago. If any one person here deserves respect and their staff gradings shouldn't be argued with, it's Ray.
Back to the point. With Kyo largely absent and Z burning out, eventually Z left too. I know a lot happened in that time, but that would be rambling to discuss. Kento vented a lot of frustrations to me after so many people left. Naga, Z, Royce, Rudy. People he loved playing with. He talked with me about how he felt the site had become toxic for him and he hadn't enjoyed himself in a very long time. Without Z to back him up, without so many of his friends, he left too. At the time he explained to me that a lot of drama, gossip, and backstabbing happened on the site. I don't know if this is true. He also alleged that at one time, Rin had started a rumor that he was going to unban Kid, told it to Ray, and the two mobilized a whole faction of the site against him to undermine him. I managed to see this unfold at the end of it and confirmed the veracity of that claim. It is largely true. I name names because it is important to remember the past, not to accuse anyone of something that is long since finished. I also know Ray went on to take personal responsibility and apologize, further evidence of the great
mod he would become. Kyo became a little more active after Kento left, and Z came back.
When Kento left, he took a few people with him. Jazz left too. A lot of the best creatives I'd ever roleplayed with, gone all at once.
As an emergency, I promoted several new staff members and requested they figure out how to make do. I had just moved yet again, and couldn't keep up anymore. Eventually I also had a baby on the way.
Now we come to why I left. Simply? I don't feel welcome here anymore. My rulings have butted heads with staff's, an issue which is not their fault, but rather mine. I don't know many of the core members anymore, and I can't exercise enough presence to, as they say, reclaim my mojo. I think the site has evolved past me. I confess disappointment too in some of how it's turned out. I think staff has become too restrictive, too willing to default to a "no" instead of "how can we explore this idea?" This site has been nerfing itself continuously at an alarmingly accelerating rate with each year too. All of that goes against my original intent for the site, which was a place of free ideas and free interaction where we talk to each other, and where staff is only necessary in limited cases so that they can grade and make new stories.
This site is not that. I love the current staff. I think they have done an excellent job. But this site is not what I envisioned anymore. This means I no longer belong.
What precipitated my realization of that solemn fact was two things. The first was my thread, "Burn The Witch," a discussion. I saw so many people quickly shut down even the possibility of trying to incorporate some features of it that I was shocked. I did some digging in gradings, asked around in private chats, and came to learn that this site's atmosphere is just a default and strict "no" in general. In the old days, perhaps this site's golden age, people would have excitedly suggested ideas for how we can do it. For example, there would have been no need to retcon. The contents of Burn The Witch could have been something existing Shinigami wanted to try to start in the present tense. The steps to getting there would have taken a lot of time and made a lot of story, and in the meantime it would have given us more time to see what Tite Kubo may have planned. It's too late now.
The second was an elephant (or Zou) in the room (Zou means elephant, it's a cute twist on words). The meme that is Stelio Kontos. The Greek Man. Asuka getting "birthday punches." It's been a meme for years, the same as Hiro Kaname for CC or "SNOWCOONNEEESSS!!!" Rin and I have joked at length about it, and I've never had any indication that it would cause a problem. So, to make up for lost time and in the hopes of reconnecting with an old friend over an inside joke, I finally put out a new "Greek Man vs Asuka" post. Well, someone went to staff to complain instead of confronting me directly and asking me to change it, which I would have without any fuss. It's my fault. I should have known better than to think this site is the same place it used to be, and I should have asked before using it in my canon, undercutting what probably would have been grand dramatic tension. Still, I am someone people can say no to. I always have been. When I understood that the trouble arose from my having not been directly spoken with, I decided that perhaps this site has also become too reliant on staff intervention, on a sort of muddled bureaucracy which, though acceptable to most of you, drains the fun of it for me. Since the original intent of this forum was to have fun, and I'm not having fun anymore, that's that. I get to leave.
I wonder to myself if people were always truthful with me. I don't think they were. I wonder, when I joked with Rin about the Greek Man, did she hate it the entire time and never tell me? When people hated Kid and wanted to ban him, why did I hear so little compared to Kento and Z? Did people think then that I was unapproachable too? It's a bittersweet way to leave the site, but it has its positives.
The staff confronting me in full took confidence. I could not be more proud of them for this. I aired many grievances with them in response, since there are many that I have and this will be my final chance, and I've laid some of those out here. The staff is not perfect. However they are excellent. Going forward, I hope all of you will afford them the maximum possible level of respect and the gratitude they deserve for working so hard for all of you for no reward. I also hope you'll hold them accountable. As I said, they are not perfect. Still, give them a break sometimes.
When all of you are making new characters or ideas, here's some advice from a long time veteran. Anything can be balanced if you consider drawback scale. Some super ridiculous spells could be possible if they require more reiatsu than is possible for one person, or require many casters, or ritual conditions that are very difficult to meet. Drawbacks can have great scale too. Think of it as reaction equals opposite reaction. Another thing to contemplate is that the best characters are the simplest ones. Self inserts never do well, nor do crazy complicated abilities or people. The best way to do things is to commit to executing a small number of things with your character, and maximizing how well you do each little thing. The best anime in the modern era for learning about this are, in my opinion, My Hero Academia, One Punch Man, and Attack On Titan. The worst in my opinion is Boruto.
And now my advice to staff. Going forward, support each other more than ever. Managing a community like this one can be truly exhausting. I continue to believe in the potential of this community. It's a good community with good people. It can still be tiring. Try to imagine, rather than nerf. Envision, rather than restrict. "No" should never be your default answer. Instead it should be "how might this be workable?" And if after you've exhausted your options and it isn't even enjoyable in the form you come to upon your conclusion of your assessment, then there is no shame in giving up or going another route. Be more stringent on the behavior of members. Don't make my mistakes of leniency. Hold people accountable, and consider their history among members. Be a little more investigative than you are. Some issues happen in the background. Private chats make gossip, drama, and slander easy. It takes vigilance to catch some of it. Encourage people to come forward, because not everyone will immediately want to be honest with you. Encourage that communication more. Lastly, don't forget that aside from what you do as staff, your and everyone's purpose here is to have fun. I'm leaving the site to you now. All of it is intact, and it's yours to run and do what you want with. I always did envision that this would be how it happened. I'd leave, but the site would go for a bit after because staff would have made it their own.
I ran a lot of this site by myself. I also ran a lot of it at some of the worst times in my life. I was depressed as a teenager and was on medication for a long time. I managed it in hours of exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, my father's death. I also had a lot of growing up to do even past my college days. I think that I made a lot of mistakes. If anyone ever felt they couldn't approach me, or if I've hurt anyone, or if I've offended anyone on staff at all, I apologize.
No matter if we knew one another or not, or what our relationship was, whether or not we got along, even if we only said one word to each other or we spent years talking into long hours of the night, this site has been my pleasure to have founded and run. I am over the moon that this site grew as it did, humbled by how devoted to making it a good community many of you are. I could not be more grateful. If any of you want to keep in touch, my email is AlexSeth1991@gmail.com. It's just a personal email from my college days that I only check once in a while, but I would love to hear from some of you in the future and receive life updates to know you're well. I know I am late in replying to some of you who already have the email. I'll catch up on that.
I am truly overwhelmed and honored to have been your administrator from March of 2010 until now.
Humbly, sincerely, and without remorse,
Zou
We're finally here. It has been a wild, wild ride since I first started this forum over 8 years ago. It's been a long time coming, probably a long time overdue too what with my longer and longer absences. I am finally, officially, declaring my retirement from this site. In three weeks I will have my last day on this site. I have a few changes I'd like to make before then that I hope will better your experiences after I'm gone. I had to return to Europe for a work emergency in the past five days, so I have not been able to use Discord, but I'll be on the Discord on Monday to answer final questions and concerns. I'll bounce around for the remaining time until then, and then that will be that.
If this is the only part you care to know, you don't have to read on. Below this will be my farewell message where I discuss my time here, this site's origins and intent, my feelings and goodbyes, why I am leaving, and some advice I have for members and for staff.
Wow. 8 years. How time flies. I was in my undergraduate program when I started this website. Today I sit in a quaint Parisian cafe for breakfast as I reminisce on how we got here. Seems so long ago.
The idea behind this site originated long before I discovered proboards and began to write the code and rules for Bleach: Online World. In 2006 I was a teenager in the middle of high school. We didn't have all of the same fancy streaming services for anime back in the day, so I had to use the internet to find a way to illegally watch Naruto. The website I stumbled upon was called EnglishNaruto. It was dubbed Naruto (I was a dub watching noob back in the day) and was hosted on a website called Freewebs, a build your own website place where someone had taken the time to literally encode all of the original Naruto episodes up to 139, the official end of the original series before the filler. There was a chatbox there, and that was where I first made my appearance. My username back then was "Corrupted Sasuke," which is why some who knew me then continue to refer to me as "Sasuke" privately, such as Sana or Rin.
On this chat, sometimes we would adapt personas and roleplay as these personas. Back then our roleplaying was based entirely on PvP interaction and was in the chat. It was called "speed RP" because a lot of your ability to do it was centered around how quickly you could type out your offensive actions. Doing so quickly enough negated an opponent's ability to counter. I've always been fast typing, so I was one of the best. As the community expanded, people started to create their own websites to indicate factions of roleplayers, with EnglishNaruto as the central hub where all people met and socialized. I got to know Sana, Rin, and Jazz (Jin's player) on that website, among others. My first faction was called "Darkness Country," a silly name I know, but my origin point for this site. As Corrupted Sasuke, I was the leader, and I prized our ability as the best PVPers in the community. Sure enough, rivals appeared. I was responsible for creating some of those rivals. There was a guy who went by the username of Naruto and another who went by Analand, an Orochimaru style player. I eventually gave them Darkness Country, at that point the largest faction with the most members, and joined an Akatsuki type faction called Huroku.
A lot happened then, but long story short the community started to die. This wasn't the end of our time together though. At some point we decided to replace the slow, lagging chatbox of our site with a chat widget called Xat, which was also its own website with many chat communities separated by title and subject matter. After EnglishNaruto started to die out we migrated to Xat, and formed new communities there. We reached out to other chats and started to find new people to play with.
Soon we encountered a different kind of roleplayer. These were called "para" or paragraph roleplayers, and they operated in a format where there was a word minimum in order to play. The highest tier at the time was s20, or speed 20, where an action required at least 20 words before you could post it. This format was still speed, but was also para. It was the "semi-para" format. Para was reserved for the likes of forums. One day I happened across one of those forums. It was called NarutoForumRP, NFRP for short. Until the last few years it was the biggest single subject anime roleplaying site on the internet. Today that is no longer the case.
I enjoyed my time there, but there were so many people already that I couldn't grasp a sense of community. I missed my Xat days. So I started my own site and recruited my Xat people. The first one was a Star Wars site, though I don't remember the name now. My character was Darth Egocide, a powerful Sith Master who sought to revive the mighty legend Darth Bane. We had a lot of fun on there, but the system was imperfect. My next try lasted a little longer. It was called Shinobi Shinigami Roleplay, or SSRP. Again, the friends of my Xat days, Rin and Sana and Jazz followed me there.
This is where the modern version of our characters first started to be born. Sana only chatted, but Jazz created his NamelessK persona there and that was the origin point for Jin Yamada and the ideas behind his persona, Anarchy. Zouma Santeku originated there, as did Rin Minamimoto's technical original form.
That site was also imperfect and so died. My next project was more ambitious. While admin for SSRP I had been playing on a website called Bleach Gotei to learn more. I enjoyed their system, but their staff were abusive of their power and the community wasn't welcoming. The rules were also still imperfect. So I made my next site as SSRP started to die from lack of new members.
This time, I named the proboards title RpforumBleach and I flooded the site and the internet with references to this so that we would appear high up on the google search. Bleach Gotei had a stat system, which is where I got the idea, and I decided to do the same. Unlike them, who only had four stats with a maximum possible 300 in each, I made a stat system with higher numbers and more stats, and I used this to balance a PvP and adventure based system that was the first of its kind as far as I know for online anime roleplay sites of this sort.
That was eight years and four months ago. Jazz, Sana, and Rin followed me, and so did others I'd picked up along the way in SSRP. We had a good starting base. I was soon able to recruit more people, which increased our google ranking, which increased how easily people found us, which expanded membership more.
I was so excited at how quickly we grew! The system wasn't perfect, as we didn't have stat limits, Types, or half the races we do now. My ability to DM was flawed and my NPCs were too overpowered, and my storytelling needed work. It wasn't a great site yet, but it was a good one. I was also able to staff it myself due to the size of it.
As time passed, we got some regulars I got along with very well. Ray was one of those regulars. A player named Kid was too. We got someone named Naga, and at some point we eventually got the likes of Z and Royce, great members themselves. On the side I was part of a Xat group called Duel_Academy too, where we used text and an honor system to play yugioh against one another. This was before fancy things like Dueling Network came out, so it was the best we got. That was where I recruited Kento, who joined up. He and Kid were the two I spoke with the most for some time on this site, with Sana and Rin being close seconds.
It was a good time, despite some friction. Kid was overtly racist and problematic, but I hadn't learned enough about the world to understand the ramifications of that yet. I was lenient in those days. It was easy to get certain behavior past me sometimes. Eventually Kid and Kento making moderators for this website. Royce was one for a time too before he stepped down.
Wow did we have some great members at the start! Characters such as Okusa Shogen, Bokuga Sayuri, Saix Shinra, Adalo De-Mona. That was when they started to appear. Kuroi, my first character here, got along well with Asuka and played a lot of threats with Kid's character, Octava Espada, Cierro.
As time moved on and I got busier and busier, and I graduated college, I started to appear less. Kento had done well with his newest OC, Sozen, so I made him a mod. Kid had done well with Ranmyaku and Shade, his characters at the time, so I made him one too. Other mods came and went, such as Naga.
We had a lot of great regulars. Ray, Jazz, Clock, Rin, Naga, Kid, Kento, Sana, Z. Kid entered college while on the site, and met his freshman roommate, who was Kyo. He introduced Kyo to this site, and I'm glad Kyo has been an enduring member long after Kid is gone.
Kid was eventually banned for, well, being awful to everyone. Racist, homophobic, all of it. Many of you know this story. I liked our players and loved how the site continued to grow. We added Types, new stat functions, new races, new systems, new plotlines, and so much more. We went through a lot of main staff to get to the triumvirate of Kento, Z, and Kyo. I'll say it now. It was an honor and a privilege to work with all of them. I appreciate the current staff. To me, who was still very active in that era, the team of Kento, Z, and Kyo was the best staff team this site has ever beheld.
It was a perfect balance. Z was the strictest, known for being the harshest grader, but he helped mellow out what would have otherwise been very overpowered characters. Kento was the most lenient, and dedicated most of his staff time to private one on ones with many members to help them flesh out plot and powers. Many of you today will remember Z and Kento doing these things. Kyo was in the middle, and bridged the gap between Z and Kento, who didn't always see eye to eye back then. Then my graduate program picked up. And Rin left. And I entered a long term relationship. And I had to move around a bunch. My activity dropped, and anyway without Rin or Kid, two of the main players with whom my RPCs had interacted, my own RPCs couldn't really thrive any further with their stories cut off. I was fine with that. Kento and Z spearheaded a lot of wonderful changes. They were both better DMs than I ever was, and their stories were really fun to play in. I felt comfortable being less and less present.
When I got married and after my father died, I felt confident that I could take as long as I needed and this site would be the same fun place I'd envisioned it being when I'd first started it. But I started to notice something whenever I checked back in. There was friction between members and mods. My star team was starting to burn out. Z, especially, was being burnt out by toxic behavior from members challenging his rulings and constantly demanding more of him. Kento was getting increasingly frustrated with people flooding his private messages with dozens of calls for help simultaneously. Kyo both got married and also hit a snag in real life and became less present, the same as me. I had to instigate Royce as a disciplinary mod, bring in other mods. A breath of fresh air came when Kento recruited ZK to the site. He has always had a good attitude and is a stellar creative. We also gained wonderful mods in the form of John and future mods in the form of good attitudes from people like Quinn. Members such as Dancer have always helped make this experience great too.
Ray will remember a lot of it. Back in those days, he instigated a lot of conflict with the staff and was very difficult to handle. I don't mention that to point fingers, but rather to show how people can change. Today Ray is reasonable, fair, and acts very professional as staff. He is one of the best mods this site has seen, and I don't think anyone would ever have thought they'd say that about him five years ago. If any one person here deserves respect and their staff gradings shouldn't be argued with, it's Ray.
Back to the point. With Kyo largely absent and Z burning out, eventually Z left too. I know a lot happened in that time, but that would be rambling to discuss. Kento vented a lot of frustrations to me after so many people left. Naga, Z, Royce, Rudy. People he loved playing with. He talked with me about how he felt the site had become toxic for him and he hadn't enjoyed himself in a very long time. Without Z to back him up, without so many of his friends, he left too. At the time he explained to me that a lot of drama, gossip, and backstabbing happened on the site. I don't know if this is true. He also alleged that at one time, Rin had started a rumor that he was going to unban Kid, told it to Ray, and the two mobilized a whole faction of the site against him to undermine him. I managed to see this unfold at the end of it and confirmed the veracity of that claim. It is largely true. I name names because it is important to remember the past, not to accuse anyone of something that is long since finished. I also know Ray went on to take personal responsibility and apologize, further evidence of the great
mod he would become. Kyo became a little more active after Kento left, and Z came back.
When Kento left, he took a few people with him. Jazz left too. A lot of the best creatives I'd ever roleplayed with, gone all at once.
As an emergency, I promoted several new staff members and requested they figure out how to make do. I had just moved yet again, and couldn't keep up anymore. Eventually I also had a baby on the way.
Now we come to why I left. Simply? I don't feel welcome here anymore. My rulings have butted heads with staff's, an issue which is not their fault, but rather mine. I don't know many of the core members anymore, and I can't exercise enough presence to, as they say, reclaim my mojo. I think the site has evolved past me. I confess disappointment too in some of how it's turned out. I think staff has become too restrictive, too willing to default to a "no" instead of "how can we explore this idea?" This site has been nerfing itself continuously at an alarmingly accelerating rate with each year too. All of that goes against my original intent for the site, which was a place of free ideas and free interaction where we talk to each other, and where staff is only necessary in limited cases so that they can grade and make new stories.
This site is not that. I love the current staff. I think they have done an excellent job. But this site is not what I envisioned anymore. This means I no longer belong.
What precipitated my realization of that solemn fact was two things. The first was my thread, "Burn The Witch," a discussion. I saw so many people quickly shut down even the possibility of trying to incorporate some features of it that I was shocked. I did some digging in gradings, asked around in private chats, and came to learn that this site's atmosphere is just a default and strict "no" in general. In the old days, perhaps this site's golden age, people would have excitedly suggested ideas for how we can do it. For example, there would have been no need to retcon. The contents of Burn The Witch could have been something existing Shinigami wanted to try to start in the present tense. The steps to getting there would have taken a lot of time and made a lot of story, and in the meantime it would have given us more time to see what Tite Kubo may have planned. It's too late now.
The second was an elephant (or Zou) in the room (Zou means elephant, it's a cute twist on words). The meme that is Stelio Kontos. The Greek Man. Asuka getting "birthday punches." It's been a meme for years, the same as Hiro Kaname for CC or "SNOWCOONNEEESSS!!!" Rin and I have joked at length about it, and I've never had any indication that it would cause a problem. So, to make up for lost time and in the hopes of reconnecting with an old friend over an inside joke, I finally put out a new "Greek Man vs Asuka" post. Well, someone went to staff to complain instead of confronting me directly and asking me to change it, which I would have without any fuss. It's my fault. I should have known better than to think this site is the same place it used to be, and I should have asked before using it in my canon, undercutting what probably would have been grand dramatic tension. Still, I am someone people can say no to. I always have been. When I understood that the trouble arose from my having not been directly spoken with, I decided that perhaps this site has also become too reliant on staff intervention, on a sort of muddled bureaucracy which, though acceptable to most of you, drains the fun of it for me. Since the original intent of this forum was to have fun, and I'm not having fun anymore, that's that. I get to leave.
I wonder to myself if people were always truthful with me. I don't think they were. I wonder, when I joked with Rin about the Greek Man, did she hate it the entire time and never tell me? When people hated Kid and wanted to ban him, why did I hear so little compared to Kento and Z? Did people think then that I was unapproachable too? It's a bittersweet way to leave the site, but it has its positives.
The staff confronting me in full took confidence. I could not be more proud of them for this. I aired many grievances with them in response, since there are many that I have and this will be my final chance, and I've laid some of those out here. The staff is not perfect. However they are excellent. Going forward, I hope all of you will afford them the maximum possible level of respect and the gratitude they deserve for working so hard for all of you for no reward. I also hope you'll hold them accountable. As I said, they are not perfect. Still, give them a break sometimes.
When all of you are making new characters or ideas, here's some advice from a long time veteran. Anything can be balanced if you consider drawback scale. Some super ridiculous spells could be possible if they require more reiatsu than is possible for one person, or require many casters, or ritual conditions that are very difficult to meet. Drawbacks can have great scale too. Think of it as reaction equals opposite reaction. Another thing to contemplate is that the best characters are the simplest ones. Self inserts never do well, nor do crazy complicated abilities or people. The best way to do things is to commit to executing a small number of things with your character, and maximizing how well you do each little thing. The best anime in the modern era for learning about this are, in my opinion, My Hero Academia, One Punch Man, and Attack On Titan. The worst in my opinion is Boruto.
And now my advice to staff. Going forward, support each other more than ever. Managing a community like this one can be truly exhausting. I continue to believe in the potential of this community. It's a good community with good people. It can still be tiring. Try to imagine, rather than nerf. Envision, rather than restrict. "No" should never be your default answer. Instead it should be "how might this be workable?" And if after you've exhausted your options and it isn't even enjoyable in the form you come to upon your conclusion of your assessment, then there is no shame in giving up or going another route. Be more stringent on the behavior of members. Don't make my mistakes of leniency. Hold people accountable, and consider their history among members. Be a little more investigative than you are. Some issues happen in the background. Private chats make gossip, drama, and slander easy. It takes vigilance to catch some of it. Encourage people to come forward, because not everyone will immediately want to be honest with you. Encourage that communication more. Lastly, don't forget that aside from what you do as staff, your and everyone's purpose here is to have fun. I'm leaving the site to you now. All of it is intact, and it's yours to run and do what you want with. I always did envision that this would be how it happened. I'd leave, but the site would go for a bit after because staff would have made it their own.
I ran a lot of this site by myself. I also ran a lot of it at some of the worst times in my life. I was depressed as a teenager and was on medication for a long time. I managed it in hours of exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, my father's death. I also had a lot of growing up to do even past my college days. I think that I made a lot of mistakes. If anyone ever felt they couldn't approach me, or if I've hurt anyone, or if I've offended anyone on staff at all, I apologize.
No matter if we knew one another or not, or what our relationship was, whether or not we got along, even if we only said one word to each other or we spent years talking into long hours of the night, this site has been my pleasure to have founded and run. I am over the moon that this site grew as it did, humbled by how devoted to making it a good community many of you are. I could not be more grateful. If any of you want to keep in touch, my email is AlexSeth1991@gmail.com. It's just a personal email from my college days that I only check once in a while, but I would love to hear from some of you in the future and receive life updates to know you're well. I know I am late in replying to some of you who already have the email. I'll catch up on that.
I am truly overwhelmed and honored to have been your administrator from March of 2010 until now.
Humbly, sincerely, and without remorse,
Zou