Warning!If you've recently been cussed out by me in a moment of rage, don't read any further unless you want to hear my side and the truth behind the rage because that's what this scrap evolves eventually into. I respect your right to not want to be exposed to my views. Herein lies my views. Take them or leave them but don't read them if you aren't ready to hear them.What I want to know is why I thought it would be a good idea to post a pic of my fridge at 4am on Miza? You should see how badly I'm laughing at myself now (and not in a good way) and thinking ... "Jen... WTF? Your fridge? .... Really? " I was just so proud of myself for cleaning it out in the depths of the night. Its almost noon too and I don't feel like cooking anything. I should.. I had a delicious sausage and mushroom quiche planned for today as a reward for good behavior last night.
You see, I've been in a funk lately. I don't know if its because of the abrupt weather change in Washington (We went from 90's to 50's overnight and parked there) or because we lost all our sunny days and are experiencing what I can only consider torrential downpours. It also might be because I've had zero free time and have been at work almost nonstop for a while which tends to stress me out when I can't reclaim my life. I am not a person that deals well with six days a week nonstop. I was supposed to volunteer for every other weekend, but things keep 'coming up' and I keep having to be there because others will not.
Part of the funk has left me lazy on my cleaning duties and the house has really suffered. I have been leaving dishes in the sink, my bathroom hasn't been cleaned for a month, and there's a hair monster erupting from the shower drain that makes me fear for my life when I go in get cleaned once a day. I even took a moment yesterday to hug my husband, apologize for the funk and promise him I'd actually start doing something other than complaining. I cleaned up the dishes, and decided to work on the house one section at a time until I have erased all evidence of my fragile mental state lately.
So that's probably what lead to the fridge incident last night.
Everything is effecting me. Everything is effecting me badly. And its no one's fault really but my own. I want to say its an early onslaught of seasonal disorder, but that'd be a lie. I'm in control of my own thoughts, my own emotions, and my own actions. No one else is and certainly the weather doesn't own me. So this is bleeding out into other areas of my life: my job, my interactions with my coven, and even Mizahar.
Then this thing happened on Miza really has me angry and hurt. And if I stepped aside and looked at it other than from Jen's perspective, its ridiculous... not the background of the thing happening but what upset me. I've even been sincerely apologized too for it, which definitely means I should drop it. The person involved is a better individual than me... but I can't. And the stupidest thing about it is that I can't seem to let it go. I'm all grown up. I should have no problems just shrugging my shoulders and saying 'Its fine.' but that's a lie and its not fine. Everyone needs to walk away from things that bother them and let them go, but I cling to unpleasant things uselessly and sometimes I go over and over them in my head and this makes me crazy because I can't either understand them.
I'm hoping if I scrap about this I'll be able to move past it. That might seem selfish or childish, but I don't pay for therapy. Mizahar is my therapy.. so bear with me.
Everyone has triggers, things that make them go batshit crazy. I have a few myself. I probably will spend a scrap talking about mine (which are the weirdest things honestly, nothing reasonable or predictable) even though I know folks like Mike will sit there and read this and go "Jen, no. Just no. Do not put that kinda ammo out on the internet especially on this site." But sometimes it helps talking about things like that and sometimes things like that loose their power over a person when they are exposed to the light.
Anyhow, so what happened that made me upset? It's a long story. But lets just say there's this player who has a history of getting in trouble on here. Their first move, and honestly the one that should have gotten them booted from the site, was to take a bunch of threads from another RPG and copy them onto ours lock stock and barrel.... threads they didn't write (but guess what I knew the folks that did write them because it was threads from the site we did come from). One of our players caught them, turned in the links to both sites and had us deal with it. We did. We let the player off with a stern warning and deleted the threads. But man... at the time I kept thinking What THE HELL? Are you like CHEATING AT THIS GAME? I think the player in question totally missed the point that winning at Mizahar is about having a hellishly good time writing on Mizahar and telling unique stories. So there's a two fold problem there. There's a serious weakness of character and lack of ethics, and I got left feeling hellishly unclean because I completely and utterly despise the site in question and now feel like we're tainted in some way by that. Then, more recently (this was a while ago) the player has been seen in chat putting down a group of people of a specific sexual orientation and has in the past done similar things. Truthfully, I'm tired of it. I don't know what the hell I'm waiting for and why I haven't cleaned house already. Sin number one was bad enough, but the subsequent things are coming out arrogant, close-minded, and really hurtful. I was in chat when the bashing happened and I had FOUR AIMS immediately about it from offended people I consider really good decent folks that would never hurt a fly or never cry wolf. If they were offended, it was a big time offense. So the individuals involved were talked too and one of them issued an apology.... but guess what.. if you read my "I'm Sorry..." scrap you're going to laugh at this next part.... the individual was sorry that the other people had gotten offended at the remarks that individual made even though they meant nothing by it....and were totally innocent. Great. Enraged again. What in the hell is wrong with me? What is it going to take before I take care of situations that are ticking time bombs? Then to make matters worse these folks are often in chat advising new folks, giving advice that's dubious at best, and truthfully in a way that means I often have to clean up afterwards.
Anyhow, that's the background. So I was in chat later a couple of days ago and something else happened. No one was offended, but I was being hounded by a question from the said individual that I didn't want to answer. Someone else stepped in and the resulting conversation really boiled down to the someone stepping in telling me about how good of a person this other person was and that they meant nothing at all by how they spoke or acted or behaved.
How many times do you hear that online? So and so is GREAT? Well, if so and so is so fucking GREAT then why are they lying, stealing (that's what I consider reposting writing on this site that is NOT YOUR OWN nor original) and offending others arbitrarily? That's like the southpark episode where Cartman pretends to have Tourettes Syndrome to get away with cussing in school. Look, I understand being friends with someone and knowing their great side, but what the hell are we supposed to do if it rarely comes through? We can't take your word for it and protect the people you love even in the face of them being the way they are here.
I would have been fine with that.... the conversation ending there.. the comment about them being a good person etc... but I started to tell them my side and why I didn't agree with them. Guess what? Shut down. They did not want to hear anything I had to say about their friend. I was only allowed to listen to their opinion and hear their concern but they in turn did not want to hear the other side.
I blew a total gasket. I mean I blew so hard I cussed at them. I still haven't apologized for cussing. If you are reading this I'm sorry I cussed. It was uncalled for. It's wrong to blow your temper and scream thats BULLSHIT back at someone else when truthfully I can see that their heart is in a good place and they don't want to gossip about someone they like. But its not gossip because it was not going to be a 'Billy or Sally is like so lame.....!' type thing. It was going to be a 'This is why I have an issue with this person and don't think they are a good person...' and shutting someone down is wrong. I said that and they apologized and said they would listen... but then I was done talking. I was absolutely done even looking at the screen I was so mad. I don't want to ruin anyone's friendship and that's not my goal nor do I care who is friends with who or why etc. I don't want to taint anyones opinion of anyone else, but godamnit, I want to be understood sometimes. I want to be able to defend my views. I want whats best for this site and what's best for this playerbase and hugely offensive people are NOT WHATS BEST... even if they have a good heart. If they have such a good godamn heart, then why the hell do they act like they do?
So why did this upset me? Couple of reasons. I spent a childhood living with a man in my life that never allowed a female to have an opinion. It was a sexist thing - trust me I knew him long enough I knew this quite clearly - and there have been other incidents here on Mizahar that have worked out into such a similar circumstance that I'm still pretty pissed off about them too. I had to ban two people - popular people that everyone LOVED (Well not everyone because the people they'd hurt all but cried their thanks - but this really close knit clique) - and they smeared my name from here to tomorrow for doing it. I actually came out looking like a top rated bitch over the situation. But I didn't want to smear someone else in front of their friends because that makes you who are doing the smearing look like a douchbag. However, the people I banned had serious mental issues, were playing games with peoples feelings behind the scenes and were lying, incessantly.... and looking back I wished I'd not tried to be such a good person and had scrapped or blogged about every little transgression they'd ever made that I'd witnessed to help cushion the smear campaign that happened afterwards. But the ban on that situation was the right move. The admin of the next site this little twit moved to contacted me not long after to ask a few questions and it seemed they were doing the same thing there they had done here.
Great. I feel bad for passing a bunch of bad apples off on another site admin. Sorry site admin. I know I apologized already, but I'm glad we talked and I could be the supportive person you needed to tell you that you weren't batshit crazy. Where was that person when I needed them? I guess I needed to do my homework a bit better and contact previous sites as well. I guess they didn't take my advice to heart (these evil twit players banned ex-players) when I told them to go to the site we came from, their battshittery would be thoroughly and utterly accepted and loved there and they could be mods and everything and live happily ever after in their cruel unkind neediness. Okay, that was below the belt, but to you folks that know who/what I'm talking about I know your laughing and you agree.
So... I'm upset about being shut down and still feel the need to speak. Why? Maybe its a funk. Maybe its the weather. Maybe its because I've been working so hard. But mainly i think its because when people act like douchbags on Mizahar, I feel personally threatened by it. And then when I'm criminalized for wanting to defend my views and my feelings of being threatened, I'm not allowed to do so until I scream bloody murder, cuss, and point out how it comes across to be shut down. I take the integrity of the site very seriously and babysit the atmosphere thoroughly. Every eleven year old I boot off because they aren't old enough to play Mizahar is drama I'm avoiding in the future and a set of parents who should thank me (and be watching what their kid is doing online more closely - stupid people!). Every time a good person gets legitimately offended and isn't apologized appropriately too I take note. I've made mistakes. I own them when I do make mistakes and apologize FOR MY BEHAVIOR not for their misunderstanding my motives. Guess what folks? Often times motives or intent don't count. Action counts.
ACTIONS COUNT. ACTIONS COUNT. ACTIONS COUNT.
Do you get it? If you want to be a fucking amazing person on this site, act amazing. Because if your going to act like a douchbag then everyone but maybe your close friends are going to think your a douchbag. How does it feel to not be liked? Maybe its time you think before you speak or change your actions... because I won't put up with it any longer. And I'm pretty sure the rest of the game can't help but agree with me.
And really I know I shouldn't post scraps like this, but that burning need and rage inside of me wanting to list the crimes of the other people I booted off (the ones everyone loved) is still in there... and I'm not letting the current situation's crimes go unspoken because I won't carry that burning need around either. Nor will I let another undeserved smear campaign happen. Deserved ones are fine. Seriously. Now you know what it takes to get me to dislike people and hopefully you all understand why I sometimes do dislike people beyond them having a whole host of the traits I consider negative that Iisted in a recent previous scrap. They should be stated and stated clearly so there's no mistake when I get the ban hammer out why I did it. It's coming. You've been warned. I'm at the ZERO tolerance stage for all the above reasons.
And if you've done any of these things and just haven't been caught yet, you' d better scurry off and start fixing them. Delete threads, apologize to folks you've offended, etc. Because sooner or later someone will discover your bullshit and call you on it. Someone always does. So call yourself on it first and grow from the experience. It saves a lot of hassle and embarrassment in the end.
by Bolden Denusk on October 10th, 2011, 9:02 pm 
Especially since it's really very hard to offend me.