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While I do believe that people can and should be given second chances if they show willingness to improve (and I am a walking testament to that fact), the slow rate at which it's happening, coupled with the harm it's causing others, give me reason to say that it might be a good course of action to ban SRPA temporarily. I'd suggest a year or so. Let's hope he learns his lesson this time.

Since my sudden disappearance concerned someone here, I thought I'd clear something up. I do a lot of things that seem arbitrary because I don't want to explain the reasoning behind them, and my decision to up and leave here was one of those things. Just to be clear, I did not die, I am not in serious trouble, thank God, and no one need worry about me.

As for the community... I don't know if I'll come back. Could go either way.

Anyone who’s talked to me on Discord knows I’m reluctant to call out my acquaintances on things that bother me. But SomeRandomPersonAccount is testing the limits of my diplomacy. His latest post left me appalled and speechless. Given how often this has happened, I don’t trust him to learn and improve.

Admittedly I haven't been looking at anything SRPA has spoilered, but that's because I've been a bit uncomfortable with his presence for a while now. At first it was just the simple misunderstandings that I relegated my unease with to anxiety, which I still believe to be the case, but since then I've seen him continue on borderline or most definitely uncomfortable topics - especially whenever he brings up his brother.

If it were just culture shock of some sort I'd understand, but he doesn't seem to get what is and isn't appropriate for us even after being told (or he simply doesn't care, but I'm hesitant to entertain that as anything but conjecture).

I don't believe I've specifically been on the receiving end of particularly unsettling comments (though the fact that that feels like something I should specify is throwing up all sorts of flags) but more often than not I find myself purposefully not interacting with SRPA if I can help it.

Warnings don't seem to be working, no matter how gentle or harsh, so I find myself leaning towards a ban of some sort.

I hate to say it, but, assuming we were to allow SRPA to remain a member of the community, which granted, is seeming unlikely at this point:

I think that the odds that he would repeat such behavior greatly outweigh the chances of him eventually learning from his past...actions. And, given the number of people negatively affected and/or hurt by those actions, I have to say, I think even that slim chance isn't worth the far more likely and immediate chance of him continuing to negatively impact other members of the community.

Now, I haven't been particularly hurt, myself, by SRPA's actions, beyond being somewhat put off and creeped out by some of the content he posted. However, as Helsinki put it during the aftermath: "I'm not affected as seriously as some other people are by content on the blacklist...But I do not enjoy my peers being brought unpleasantness and unhappy feelings."

So, in answer, I think the line is here and now, if we are willing as a community to draw it.

(Yes I know I barely talk on the Board - my apologies. Not super confident in socialisation.)

I'm in agreement that the line ought to be drawn. While I haven't seen the worst of what he's done - I find him a bit uncomfortable to talk to, and often try to avoid addressing him because yes, he just does not stop. Even after being told to censor properly, I'm fairly certain I've still seen instances of him not doing so, for instance, and the way he conducts himself is generally uncomfortable to talk to & shows no sign of learning.

The most I've seen from SRPA was only partially bleeping a few curse words here and there.

Knowing that SRPA has posted this stuff has made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

It just... doesn't seen like he'll stop. At all.

He says he'll stop, but he doesn't.

tl;dr: SRPA is making himself unwelcome, especially on the Discord. He's been given multiple warnings and requests for improvement, and he's not improved significantly - he's followed some, split hairs on others, and continued to do some of the more egregious things. This needs to stop.

First, a review of the rules.

This all circles around section three of The Constitution, you may want to review it before continuing. A few key points: If someone's asked to stop doing something that's offensive or hurtful, they're expected to stop. If they don't stop, the community is expected to respond - up to and including asking the offender to leave.

On the discord, we've put a couple guidelines in writing. Along with the general exhortation that this is a SFW / PG-13 space, there are a few topics that we ask people to be careful around. Most relevant to this discussion are suicide and certain kinds of harm to animals: Along with being a little bit hard to discuss while remaining SFW, those topics are specifically distressing to members of this community, and we ask people to be extra careful about warning for them and using Discord's features to let people choose to engage or not.

Regarding SRPA

SRPA has been pushing the lines for a while. There was a discussion of this last December, that didn't come to much of a consensus. I agreed with Nesh's perspective at the time, that SRPA wasn't acting maliciously, and that he was doing his best to learn.

Unfortunately, since then, SRPA has not improved significantly. He's still stepping on toes, he's made more people uncomfortable with his presence, and along with doing new unwelcome things, he's continued to do some things that we've asked him to stop.

Some smaller complaints

SRPA continues to go beyond what's really acceptable or comfortable in the PPC. This has happened both here on the Board and in Discord - for example, This NSFW post. He's also posted seemingly-unknowing transphobic jokes in Discord (the dear old "attack helicopter" saw), and used a reasonable amount of b-rely c-nsor-d profan-ty. He's been asked to knock it off, and seems to have done so, but... he's still doing things that make me, and other people, uncomfortable. For every thing we ask him to stop, it feels like he's found a new way to step on toes. And finally, a thing we've asked him to stop is deleting messages after he's sent them. He's continued to do so, in PMs with Akrinor, who was acting in his capacity as a moderator, and in the fallout from...

The big complaint. (tw: animal abuse.)

And then there's the one I have asked him, repeatedly, to stop. SRPA has repeatedly talked about harm being done to animals. Either by his hands (the first time this came up, he was boasting about killing spiders, and then promptly deleted it when people reacted poorly), or in ways that are wildly NSFW. He linked (with spoiler tagging and warning, but still) to a video of graphic animal abuse (screenshot, video preview and graphic text). And most recently, he made a graphic (with spoiler tagging and warning) comment about being entertained by animals and suicide. (screenshot, descriptions of animal harm). When he was pressed on the last of those, he acknowledged that it was inappropriate, and he repeated himself without spoiler tagging or warning (tw: animal harm).

After the spider incident, he said to me "Then I'll keep killing things private", and "I will not talk about death or anything related to that," which I really hoped had settled the matter? He posted the video four months later, and I asked him very directly, "Okay - that video you posted in picsandspam was way over the line. I appreciate you spoilering it and warning it, but... please don't post things like that.", and then when he got called on the latest comment, his defenses were "I thought if it was spoilered it would be fine", and "I thought I had to remove those messages because they were too graphic". And I... I honestly don't know how to make "stop posting things like that" more clear. That's not a meaningful improvement, that's hair-splitting with excuses. (screenshot)

All that to say

SRPA's making himself unwelcome on the Discord in a big hurry. Everyone who was present for the last incident was ready to see the last of him, and I've heard from multiple people who weren't present that they're not comfortable with him being around either.

At this point, I don't believe he'll improve at any rate I'm comfortable with. There are some things he hasn't done again after being asked to stop, but he keeps finding new ways to act inappropriately, and the hugest complaint has happened repeatedly after being asked to stop.

So. At what point do we draw the line? This behavior is obviously unwelcome, at what point do we say that we don't believe SRPA will stop? I've reached that point. I'm asking other people on the Discord to add their perspectives, to see if we can reach a consensus.

(inevitably, edited for formatting)

After looking at a truly awful series of suefics featuring a trans dimentional hopping and snatching pokemon region, I've been inspired to up the pace at which I make my permission request. I just need some betas to make sure I can make it as good as possible. I also need help deciding which of my two potential creative/random prompts I should use.

I checked the adopted minis list, but I couldn't find anyone who already had him.

Yay!

Congratulations, it's great to have you!

yeets confetti into the clouds

I was venturing once again into the dark bowels of Adult-FanFiction.org for something to sink my agents' teeth into when I found this truly charming story. I can't possibly decide if this is a trollfic or not, but either way, the summary, the first few paragraphs and the tags were perfectly enough for me to never want to read it and find out. Warnings: misogyny, NSFW and potentially NSFB; also just incredibly tasteless in general.

http://tv.adult-fanfiction.org/index.php?cat=66

The fic in question is on the top of this page, called The Patriarchy Plan (yes, really). Linking this page first so y'all can read the summary and the tags in all their disgusting majesty.

http://tv.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600099614

Here's the fic itself - I'm not going to read it for the sake of my mental health, but I salute anyone brave enough to do so.

Thoughts?

I'm missioning a really old LotR fic on the side of my current project with Nesh, and my agents found Eldrond, a mini who apparently hasn't been adopted by anyone in the vicinity of the PPC or OFUM. I don't know if we're still doing the adopting minis thing, but can my agents keep him? I've always wanted one of these for my characters. : D

I recognise your name, and Zing seems to recognise you. I think that qualifies as community engagement.

I always start by reading the stories; it lets me form an image of the characters before you tell me what they should seem like. So:

Control prompt:

It's shocking to hear me say this, because I usually go the other way, but I think you might not have [i]enough[/i] narrative for the amount of dialogue. You're leaving a lot of questions unaddressed. Example: why does Ghost go on a hyper-specific tangent about curses, and what is up with Other Character's response to that - why does she think being scared of ghosts makes her 'that stupid', and what is Ghost reading into her tone? Why does he say 'you're not wrong' when, er, she's exactly right? And what was the familiar book?

Creative prompt:

This one hangs together much better (and is [i]hilarious[i]), but still has moments where I feel like you're hoping we can read your mind. If there's something you want to be sure your reader gets, you need to put it down on the page. As an example:

Ghost’s eyes widened as he took in the equipment in the wild-haired, wide-eyed agent’s hands.

A soft, ominous clanking made Ghost turn around. The very sight of it sent him screaming and running, leaving his instrument and heavy tome behind, as the murderous agent hurled a crossbow bolt after him.

What was the clanking behind him? What was the 'heavy tome'? Does 'hurled' imply that the agent didn't fire the crossbow? It's all just that little bit confusing.

Characters:

Honestly, they look fine. :) I don't see anything to cause concern: you've described them clearly enough to work with, but not so extensively that you lock yourself in. I feel like Hedda has the words 'daughter of...' looming in her future. :)

Overall: some stuff to work on, but nothing deal-breaking. Permission Granted - have fun!

hS

Or 45 pages. It really is a horrendous fic. I'll email you in just a bit - thank you for volunteering, this fic really needs to be chased out with a broom from the canon.

Also, I know, I've been having some technical difficulties with Dreamwidth - I had to delete the original post because the site kept eating half of it. Everything was visible in my text editor, but as soon as I posted, the sporking disappeared from a certain point onwards. I'll post a new link as soon as I figure out how to fix this, I just didn't want to keep updating the original post.

Update: new link to the sporking is up now!

I think I'm probably the beta you need and will volunteer regardless of length, but I'm a flake with a tendency to procrastinate and be distracted by other projects. I try not to be, but I know myself better than to guarantee anything, so fair warning. E-mail, if you need it, is neshomeh dot soul at gmail dot com.

Glad to see the Raze MST is back! Your link is broken, though.

~Neshomeh

I don't know if y'all recall this interlude that I've written in the Tolkien-verse, but doctorlit pointed out a nice big plothole in it that I hadn't noticed at the time about pretty much the whole fic having been rendered moot with a few neuralyzers (which had apparently vanished from my memory when I wrote this). I have a few more missions under my belt that I'm hoping to post sometime, so I figured it would be time to polish this story a little so that it would line up with my other ones. Is the plot still contrived? Probably, but it's no longer borderline impossible, I think.

Also: I have an absolutely horrendous Tolkien badfic three-part mission written that I've been hoping to publish now that I have a lot more time on my hands to get back into writing (what with the whole lockdown thing and all). It's seriously one of the worst fics I've ever read, guys - it's got every sexual trigger warning I can think of and then some, and the canon-violation levels are so impressive I was praying for Bleeprin myself by the end of it. It's a Bleepfic, all right. The first part has already been beta'd by Zingenmir, but the other two are still mostly unedited... so if one of our Tolkien nerds with a strong stomach could help me out with another opinion, I'd be most grateful.

Update: since I'm getting back into writing, I'm also picking up my sporking of Tillie Cole's novel Raze again. It's been months, guys, my apologies - but I'll be back with more absurdity and sappy romance very soon. Please enjoy this snippet of sporking until then. (The link has been broken for a while because Dreamwidth kept eating half my post, but it's fixed now, more or less.)

And I'm glad you think it's good! It got the most tweaking of the lot (not that that's saying much, but over the past few months here and there there were a few details that got tweaked and tweaked and tweaked), so I'm glad it turned out well and that the imagery/tone/etc came through/worked. And ha, yeah, uh...I have no idea if he's going to talk about it (sorry, Jenni!) He does have Mirrad, so you never know; he also has Jenni, and I've set this in 2016 in the end, so...there's at least a chance he'll talk about it? More likely he won't say too much, but will reach out for comfort and possibly talk to Mirrad (or Jenni, or someone else, depending on what he wants to say) about Ianto for a bit. So it's not all bad :P

I know you've read the Gerry one (comes of saying 'hey, I have a FicPsych character now and this is the only piece written for him so far'), but can't really remember what you said about it, if anything much. Glad you enjoyed the two, though.

To be perfectly honest, that story came about partially because I've never broken a bone myself (but Dawn is in far more situations where she might, so it would make sense for it to happen to her)! I had both descriptions and different types of painful experiences to draw on, though, so it worked out (though now I'd be very interested to hear what someone who has broken a bone thinks of it!) Abaddon is kind of a sweetheart underneath the bits of awkwardness and playacting and--well, he's a reasonably good guy on the whole, anyway. And I love playing around with T'Zar, a full Vulcan (as opposed to Spock and his struggles with his human side) surrounded by non-Vulcans, and how she adapts the longer she's in HQ. Same with her friendship and former partnership with Dawn (and Abaddon, but Dawn's has had more development). I think she winds up using that bit of logic more and more as the years go by; it's not exactly changing who she is, just adapting a little to ease the HQ experience, which is only logical, after all ;) It's not a matter of discomfort, of course; just a matter of not having to deal with emotional beings' reactions to what they might see as a lack of consideration, which would likely cause problems later down the line...

That's the line, anyway :) Underneath that, well, Vulcans have pretty strong emotions; if loosening the control over them ever so slightly helps the illogical beings with whom she's connected and whom she loves fiercely behind the control...well. It's not traditionally logical, but on the whole, it makes a lot of sense.

...whoops, I tangented.

At this point, I get the feeling Gerry's keeping the dragon heritage. I like it a lot, as well as the idea of actually finally having a character from an original continuum (or at least not from a canon and not from World One), which was actually a very early plan that took multiple forms and has yet to actually make it into posting. Most of the ideas have been dropped, at least when it comes to incorporating them into the PPC. At any rate, I think he'll probably keep the dragony bits, even if they don't come out to play too often.

I should probably find him a surname at some point, though this is the PPC. He could get by without one.

Oh my gosh. You know, every bit of that was written in 2019? /suspicious look/ Who wrote that? What did you know? Tell usss.

Given the song reaction is your fault, it's a good thing you like it :P I'm not sure I can blame you if I wind up throwing him at some Chameleon Circuit songs, though. (Actually, the Reader+"Gallifreyan History"...heck, a group of Time Lords+half their songs...this could be an interesting expansion of the Continuity Council.)

~Z

In order (mostly):

-Glad that went over well! I think you may have had nice things to say about this one ("Caution") the first time it went up (as a prompt fill), so it's nice to see it still reads well two years later :)

-I would love to see more of "Keys". I'm not sure I'm up for writing more, at least currently, but I'm hopeful it'll get added to by someone eventually. Anyone with a Time Lord agent (preferably an involved one, for sense-making) is welcome to write more. In the meantime, well, reading it over made me laugh, so I thought it would be fun to bring back (and finally collect in one doc like I'd intended to; editing/formatting uniformity can still wait until it's done, though).

-"Gerry": Yeah, it's kind of a nice distinction, isn't it? :) And oh dear. I hope the transformation doesn't reverse in the air if he calms down, but...at the same time, it might make sense if it did. Maybe he got lucky and there's a safety feature there? He doesn't pull out the wings too frequently (if ever, really), so I'm not so sure that he knows too much about how they work beyond the general mechanics. What he has to deal with most frequently, at least going by the RPs that created this aspect of him, is his body (concentrated on his hands) heating up a lot if he's steamed simmering angry enough. He's usually a pretty chill guy outside of the whole...dragon thing and pent up anger and frustration. The green tea helps, or at least he thinks it does. I'm hoping to write more of him at some point, for sure :)

-Fair enough! One was a bit of silliness, and the other is a bit more of a record/summary than a proper story. This is the last of the retirement pieces, I think, if that helps at all; I actually started it in 2017, but...it just didn't get finished for a while. Things happened. Finally, I realized how to wrap it up, and both translate and put in a few other changes; waiting a couple years may have helped it a little, honestly? At any rate: it's done now, and out, and apart from wiki editing, that's that. Baron Than and Agents Des and the Librarian are now officially retired, as requested. I expect they're all doing reasonably well :)

-And the best for last: aaah, I'm so happy about your reaction to "Torn"! Ianto is, technically, dead in canon (though it happened after Jacques was recruited), but while there is fic along those lines (with Jack, obviously), I haven't touched it writing-wise and don't really plan to, especially since the Whoniverse doesn't tend to really...have afterlifes. Jack certainly never describes seeing anyone, either, so his case probably isn't different.

I'm glad it had emotional impact :D And yes! Yes, very much so! The freezing covers every injury he later heals from, with more intense cold for the worst ones and less intense cold for the minor ones. I think the idea may have been taken very vaguely from the occasional notion of hell being cold instead of hot (...actually, I think that might be from Supernatural, or at least used in it?) I'm glad it worked and that you spotted it (hopefully it isn't too subtle! Hrm) and thank you so much! Seriously, this was great to see first thing in the morning.

~Z

I'm glad you were amused :) The song isn't one I'd seen before, but it showed up for writing reasons and then Neshomeh...mentioned something about how Jacques reacting to it would be funny? I don't actually remember exactly how this happened, just that she said something like that and once I had the lyrics I decided to give it a go.

Same :) Hopefully it'll be within a month, though who the heck knows, really :) I mean, if you look at my track record...most of these were written in 2018 >.>

Still, hope springs eternal, no? :)

~Z