The Apology Thread
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@Arkandel said in The Apology Thread:
But although that kind of friendship is important I will return what I'm given, too. If I suggest playing together a few times and you decline but don't reciprocate later on I'll take the hint and not ask again. No harm done or insult taken but I'll share my time online with people who like spending theirs hanging out with me. I think that's fair.
This should be embossed in gold and hung over the door. It's my basic philosophy. I'm an easy-going person. I'll spend time with anyone ... as long as I think they want to spend time with me, too. In game, that means if I'm constantly bugging you for a scene, and you never seem to be up for it? Well, eventually you're going to be on my list of people to not-bug. If I page and chat and you're all standoffy? I won't page anymore.
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@Lisse24 said in The Apology Thread:
@Arkandel said in The Apology Thread:
But although that kind of friendship is important I will return what I'm given, too. If I suggest playing together a few times and you decline but don't reciprocate later on I'll take the hint and not ask again. No harm done or insult taken but I'll share my time online with people who like spending theirs hanging out with me. I think that's fair.
This should be embossed in gold and hung over the door. It's my basic philosophy. I'm an easy-going person. I'll spend time with anyone ... as long as I think they want to spend time with me, too. In game, that means if I'm constantly bugging you for a scene, and you never seem to be up for it? Well, eventually you're going to be on my list of people to not-bug. If I page and chat and you're all standoffy? I won't page anymore.
Same here. Typically, I will ask three times. If, on the third time, I am turned down for whatever reason, my general response is that they can let me know if they ever want to play/are available, and then I figure my work is done. If they want to RP, they can let me know, but I'm not going to chase after them. Frustrating thing, though, is when someone pages ME wanting RP, and I say sure, here are the times I'm available, what works? and then they say, uhhhh, I don't know. I'll say, well, you know when I'm on, so give me a wave when you want to play, and then they never contact me again.
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I think I misspoke, really. Logically, I understand -- and did, as to the question I put forth. Emotionally, it doesn't matter how much people explain it, it baffles me. I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do, or the wrong way to behave, or anything along those lines. What I am saying is that I do care about the people on the other side of the screen. @Ganymede (I pick on you because the comparison between our approaches is so dramatically different) has always been very private, and that has not kept me from being emotionally invested there. Because I am who I am, and I do not -- can not -- see caring about people I spend time with, virtually or not, as a bad thing. Me caring about other human beings just isn't a bad thing.
I choose to be pretty damn open about a lot of things, and it has certainly caused me a considerable amount of pain over the years. Buuuuut I have that problem in the meat world, too.
ETA: I should also add because otherwise I'm sure it's going to come up: I know damn well most folks don't care about me as much as I do them. That is something I have had to deal with in my life since I was probably 4 or 5 years old. It's not new, and it's not unique to online.
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I end up in this same situation a lot, as well. I tend to care a lot about people, and just generally want people to be happy and healthy and safe as can be. I get invested. Etc etc.
That said, I don't think any approach is wrong. But I too also have a hard time wrapping my mind, emotionally, around the idea that you just-- wouldn't care about this person you spend hours and hours with.
#FreeFarfalla
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@Meg Just to be clear here.
Of course I care about people, but I am not attached (or, more realistically, I try not to be) to them.
That's mainly a defensive mechanism - it used to bug me more when people just dropped out of roleplay but it happens so much it was soon obvious either I'd adjust my way of thinking to it or I'd be bummed much of the time. It's also a practical consideration though since sometimes games begin to suck and I feel I must seek greener pastures which means leaving players I liked behind. So for example I enjoyed playing with @Sunny on KD but I felt I had good reasons for departing.
To use the real life analogy, players I MUSH with - or shoot the shit with on MSB - are kind of the equivalent of folks I meet at my local gaming store. Some I know by sight and we're nodding-buddies, others we occasionally play a game of Magic together so I know their names plus a few more things about them, and we discuss most nerdy things together.
There are also some I've been playing with for years; we have each other's phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and we're aware of each other's life situations a lot more... but it's still the hobby that brings us together. It's the difference between "a friend of mine I play games with sometimes" and "a gaming buddy I also consider a friend" if that makes more sense.
TL;DR - I like you freaks, and I'm pretty fond of some of you. But I can't and won't count on you for anything more than to play, chat and have fun - nor will I ever expect anything more from you, because I know either you or I can disappear at a moment's notice...
... and that's okay.
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That's valid. I certainly don't expect anyone on any game I play with to-- idk, give me five bucks if I am broke. I don't expect that they have to even keep playing with me. Or listen to me whine, etc etc.
I definitely would for them, though. Not that we can't disappear from each other's lives in an instance, but while I'm in it, I do care.
And then there are the friends that I have made that go waaaaay beyond being brought together by a hobby. That like, I couldn't kick out of my life if I even wanted to, but we did start by being on a MU* together. I can count on them for literally anything. So, I probably have a skewed view.
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I'll say this: when my brother passed away suddenly a couple months after I got laid off and while I was still unemployed, it was several of my close MU* friends who got together and pooled money to make sure I didn't have to worry about things like plane tickets. I woke up one morning to a Paypal notice for something like $700. (Several of those people are on MSB. You know who you are, and I love you forever.)
That said, those were also people that I had been playing with for years (most of them about three years at that point?) and had met in person multiple times. They had gone from RP friends to everyday friends who I also RPed with. It's a circle that has become my circle of best friends. (I, in fact, live with one of them now!)
That said, people don't get into my circle of close friends from RP easily. It's easy for me to be friendly to new people, but I am not INSTANTLY INTIMATE on an OOC level. But I demonstrably have no issue with the idea of eventually becoming really close friends with someone I meet on a MU*. I do think I can be kind of cold if people try to dump too much on me early in our OOC acquaintance; I have pretty firm boundaries there, and I'm really sorry but I can't be your sudden close friend or therapist when I just met you so recently. I am pretty good about managing my own mental health that way.
So: I both do not become immediate friends with people AND also can become very close friends with people on MU*s.
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@Roz said in The Apology Thread:
So: I both do not become immediate friends with people AND also can become very close friends with people on MU*s.
It's a super-fascinating part of the MU* community in general, for me, how very differently people can compartmentalize their online versus offline personas / how attached they can get versus how detached they keep, and yet we all manage to (occasionally) successfully roleplay together.
I keep a pretty short leash on my RL information, yet there are people I game with whom I'd pitch in for plane tickets like your example, even though they don't even know my name.
Negotiating the gap between your own preferences for info-sharing and your RP partner's can be the trickiest part of gaming, sometimes.
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@gasket said in The Apology Thread:
@Roz said in The Apology Thread:
So: I both do not become immediate friends with people AND also can become very close friends with people on MU*s.
It's a super-fascinating part of the MU* community in general, for me, how very differently people can compartmentalize their online versus offline personas / how attached they can get versus how detached they keep, and yet we all manage to (occasionally) successfully roleplay together.
I keep a pretty short leash on my RL information, yet there are people I game with whom I'd pitch in for plane tickets like your example, even though they don't even know my name.
I can understand that, actually. People are often persuaded to be charitable to others that they may or may not know, and charity often doesn't have to involve sharing personal information at all. You're giving away something you're willing to part with -- some money -- but still holding onto what you don't want to give -- your personal info/access to a certain amount of intimacy.
I mean, people donate to GoFundMe campaigns benefitting total strangers just because they feel empathy with their situation.
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I would say that with the exception of 3 folks my local "chosen family" are all folks that I initially met via mushing. Hell, I met my spouse mushing. I have established friendships with many more. Throughout the years I've hosted and hung out with a ton of people.
I have a broad base of friendships and social network via non-MUSH pursuits as well. There are PTA and church and volunteering or interest group friends too, of varying degrees of intimacy.
I do care about people--a lot. It doesn't really stop me from distancing if their behavior warrants it or promote reliance on people inappropriately. There are many folks online I enjoy shooting the shit with ooc but don't prefer their play style (or they don't like mine), and people I do enjoy rp wise that I don't care to deepen friendships with (and I assume many people who do not want that with me!)
I think your degree of sociability on mushes is not some moral or niceness thing as much as how you tend to operate socially in any circumstances. There are some folks that upon first meeting would be happy to give you a lift or take in your life story or bring you dinner, ect. Others take a long while to warm up. Or wouldn't until you reach intimate friend/family status. There are some folks who don't call someone a friend until there is a high degree of mutual bondedness--others view everyone as a friend to be treated that way until proven otherwise. There's variety. And that's fine by me!
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@mietze Exactly!
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I've met some wonderful people through this hobby that I'm closer to than all but a handful of my friends IRL. I've kept in better 'touch' with these people I met through MU*ing than all but a couple of my college friends.
Those are people I played with for YEARS, though. The idea of giving someone who's scened with me once or twice actual information about myself to Skype/chat offline is really weird to me.
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I am kinda in both camps on this one. To me RPing is primarily a social activity, if it was just the placing myself in a role and gaming aspect there are video games that do that better and far more time efficiently then MU* could ever dream of, and I am far more likely to RP with someone I find pleasant OOCly then someone unpleasant or a blank slate OOCly. However I almost never give out RL information to people I RP with even those I consider friends and have RPed with across multiple games over many years.
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I'm gonna just leave this here.
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@Ganymede Is that why you left right after getting me to come and be mortal staff? I never knew. I thought you just flaked out.
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@Insomnia said in The Apology Thread:
@Ganymede Is that why you left right after getting me to come and be mortal staff? I never knew. I thought you just flaked out.
Um -- I need more context than this. I know not what you mean.
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You had me come and help be mortal staff on Denver. We used to talk on... I wanna say ICQ or something old like that, you were running Denver, had me come on as staff. I was... Cherry, I think, and then you went poof like 2 weeks later. (In regards to you being removed from Denver's staff).
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I don't know if this has already been covered in this thread, I didn't read through the entire thing, but I find what's more rare than an honest apology from someone owning up to what they've done, is the idea of forgiveness for someone fucking up on a game to someone else.
This was bred out of a conversation I recently had with someone on a game. And it got me thinking. For all the bile and angst and rage that MUs seem to generate at times, we hear so few of the times that players who have had beef in the past being able to move forward, forgive the other person(or even admit their own fault to where the anger came in some cases)and move forward.
There have been a certain number couple of times where I've heard someone say "Oh, I can't believe that X and Y are friends again. Especially after what X did/said/done to/about Y." And I sometimes ponder to myself how unfortunate it is that it's so rare that we hear about it. Or least, from my perspective anyways. Made me wonder why this this.
If it's just a symptom of it being the internet, that anonymity allows grudges to fester, sometimes for years. It's true that this isn't exclusive to MUing. Far from it, but I suppose this is my best example since this is where I see it most often. I guess, I try to look at from the standpoint of, "holy shit aren't we supposed to be adults about this?". Which yeah, is easier said than done(and we say this so much I notice), notably if you're one of the injured parties involved. It's easier to be mad and resentful than it is to look at it from the other perspective.
And maybe there are just some truly shitty people in the world. Not saying everyone is a saint either. We fuck up, we make mistakes, we lie. I know I have and have lost people that I valued as a RP partner in the process of that, and I do regret that. But the number of times I look at myself and consider how many people I've forgiven versus the number of people that I haven't and that number is eschewed heavily to one side that I can't say I'm all that proud of. So maybe it is easier to just be mad and hold some animosity for some stupid shit that one person did months or even years ago, when realistically, I can't think of a reason why I'm still mad. Only that I am. Especially when that reason seems more and more petty. Maybe it seemed relevant at the time, less so now. The whole concept of the Hatfields and the McCoys, they keep fighting a war they no longer know why they're fighting anymore.
Maybe you're angry because you feel slighted. That you didn't do anything wrong, and yet get your name dragged through the proverbial MU mud. Because once your name is tarnished, it's so hard to get back. And it doesn't even matter whether or not what you did is even true. Because easier to avoid that person on chans, leave scenes the other person is in, and just be petty.
Or maybe you're angry because someone was honestly shitty to you. They lied to you, screwed you over for some kind of IC advantage or magic macguffin. Or lied to you OOC, saying one thing and doing another. Or they hurt a friend of yours in a IC or OOC way. The list is pretty long for reasons why.
You could do nothing and let the anger fester because you don't want to cause some kind of confrontation that could spiral out of control. Which happens in a lot of cases. On the flip side you can also be a dick and antagonistic(though depending where you play, it might just get you banned) instead of just asking, 'so yeah, i'm pissed at you, but I want to hear your side of it. I want to know why you did/said X'. Maybe they'll apologize, maybe they won't, maybe they'll lie to your damn face, but maybe the fact that you considered long enough to actually broach the topic says more than than anything else. Some might appreciate it, some might not care, but I feel like what matters is that you tried.
Though what I think is the most insidious of all this is the word of mouth. You hear from one person that X did/said this about Y and you, someone who had nothing to do with the situation decides, well shit, they're an assclown, fuck them and the horse they rode in on. Holy damn, that is something I was horrible with for a long time. Come to my shock that, wait hold on, Y isn't even that bad, why the hell was I even mad at them?
It might mean nothing in the end. At the very end of the day, most people, beyond the ones you talk to on a heavy OOC basis where you share Skype handles and phone numbers, don't mean much. They're lives will never intersect with yours beyond whatever method of online media you partake in(unless you stream Twitch and someone decides to be a dick and SWATs you). But the longer I've been in this hobby the more I think I should actually try forgiving people that I've fell out of touch with, especially if the fault was mine, or if I've deserved some measure of it in some kind situation where neither side came out looking pretty. And on the other hand, I should be willing to forgive when someone honestly comes to me and apologizes.
Or maybe I'm just getting older and more jaded and realizing that I'm indeed 'getting too old for this shit'. Could just be simply as not caring as much as I used and letting really old and dumb reasons for being angry go.
tl;dr Monogram matures a little
MUSH-free since 02/2017
This may or may not change in the future.
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@Monogram here is my outlook on it. Do it. If you're sorry, apologetic, or otherwise feel as though you somehow slighted someone and truly feel remorse for it? Show the other party that you recognize your mistake and are attempting to correct it, whether that means moving on from it and trying to return to a sense of normalcy or leaving them alone.
Why do people hold grudges? The answer is likely as varied as the person holding it over the span of months or even years in our hobby and I'm well aware that I can hold grudges for decades. Why do people hold grudges repeatedly? Well, as we've saw with a member or seven of our community and as you indicated in your post "Oh, I can't believe that X and Y are friends again"; sometimes people act like asses. Repeatedly. We see X and Y being friends again after Y told X they hated them, then six months later they're enemies again when it gets out that X said they didn't believe Y over their self-diagnosed Asperger's. People attempt to forgive, forget, move on, and never stop to think maybe their personalities just don't coincide. Which spawns years of back-and-forth loathing-make up-loathing-make up relationships that we see sometimes.
Sometimes? It's miscommunication and the ability of some people to refuse to be adults in the situation, even only some of the time. Other times one or both parties just want to avoid the drama until it blows over, but it never does. Sometimes it's not even clear what the other party was pissed about, people are finicky creatures at the best of times.
Two or three years ago I was acting like a complete and utter dick to @Coin. He may very well have not noticed it, I only say this because he never mentioned it to me directly and I never brought it to his doorstep. I allowed it just quietly fester. At that time he was running his own game, with multiple people inviting me to come check it out. I refused because he was a (head, I think)staffer and I figured that he'd use his position to be an ass toward me. Fast forward a couple of months and I finally gave in to the repeated attempts to get me onto the game.
You know what Coin did? That jerkoff (I say this with love)? He was nothing but friendly, professional, and overall Chillzilla with me. Maybe he didn't know about our quiet beef? Maybe he didn't care? Regardless, if he did have some inkling of it he gave zero indication and took the high road. This, in turn, made me realize that I was being a childish dickhole. It was on me, not him. This made me reassess how I was treating others and as a result made me want to change how I behaved toward others; selfish, right? Well, change has to begin with yourself. Now? I pop onto Skype randomly to share pictures with Coin, check in on him randomly, make small talk briefly while I'm on there(which isn't often), and generally attempt to restore/maintain the sense of camaraderie that he and I shared a long time ago. Know what else? I've never actually apologized in written word, I've only tried to show that I was sorry for my actions by returning to a sense of normalcy.
But, if I'm wrong about showing rather than saying. Then you have my apology @Coin for acting like a fucking idiot by taking something that could have been resolved early with a simple conversation and blowing it out of proportion. I hope that my actions have shown this to be true.
Now that goes against my earlier comments in this thread about making an apology personal, rather than shouting it in the street. Which makes me a hypocrite now, I guess. It seemed appropriate, oh well.
MSB free since 24/3/2018
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I think there's a lot of worthwhile stuff to consider there, @Monogram.
I do think there are some folk who are not deserving of second chances. That said, I don't mean that as a universal 'no one should give this person another chance', but simply that I, personally, would not do so, were I in the position of decision-maker.
The way I'm reading, your experience involves not forgiving people more often than doing so; mine is somewhat the opposite, and it comes with more than its fair share of regrets and wince-filled hindsight, too.
I would like to be able to say, "At least I did my best, gave them the benefit of the doubt, and tried my hardest to make things right," is a balm to the times when it goes horribly wrong, but while it helps now and again, it is, in itself, a double-edged sword. There are times it will, yes, be a comfort; you'll know, even if no one else knows -- or would ever believe -- that you did all you could with honest intentions and efforts. There is, absolutely, something to be said for that. Other times, it will cut the shit out of your hands as you try to hang on to that, and you'll hurt, you'll bleed, and you'll start to wonder why the hell you carry that damned sword around at all, let alone by the blade -- but frankly, there's no other way to carry it.
It, like much of life when shit gets real, doesn't come with safety padding.
And even though we're talking about pretendy fun time games, these things rarely come up -- at least for me -- from small things, but from things that are, on some level, a fairly extreme betrayal of an actual friendship, or the realization that the other person is simply incompatible with my fundamental understanding of the universe, the way things work, the way things are, etc. I will pound my head pretty hard against the latter until I'm bruised as hell and dizzy from it, trying to see the other person's perspective if I think they're worth it, but in the end, not everyone is worth that effort, sometimes they actually are just not quite 'right', and sometimes, those people need to be cut loose.
I can, for instance, understand why someone might think, for instance, that because they have a day job/child to raise/business to run/major daily RL responsibility, they should be able to behave IC and OOC with as much selfishness and disregard for their fellow players (even people they claim are close friends) as they can get away with, but that understanding is not going to make me any more willing to deal with them any more than I have to, because I know they have justified, to themselves, that they can do whatever they like, whenever they like, to whoever they like, and whoever objects to this treatment for this reason is in the wrong. And, yes, I have absolutely heard more than a few people say this, out loud, and see nothing at all wrong with it.
You essentially have two options with people like that: continue to be their doormat and tolerate that treatment, or walk away. You don't have to walk away angry, and it's better if you don't (even if that's hard to manage sometimes), but past a certain point, trying to get through/past this sort of thinking is tantamount to impossible.
I'm a loudmouth around here. I'm snarky and generally outspoken as hell and I have enough 'hills to die on' (that I've argued well past their death) that I could probably be mistaken for a brand new roller coaster much of the time. Most folks around here would not peg me for 'stereotypical doormat', but that's absolutely how I've spent the vast majority of my life, even recently.
As someone who typically would reach out to these people -- including the type described above -- when something went wrong, and would try to help/make things better/make things right/etc., often convinced it was my fault (even when it wasn't), I got stepped on more than just 'a lot'.
There is, essentially, a third way: not forgive and forget, not fester in wrath, but just peaceably live and let live, apart.
It is not easy. This is one of those 'do as I say, not as I do' sorts of things; I've almost never managed to do it.
It is almost always the only answer when confronted with some of the more abusive and manipulative personalities out there, in the hobby, and out.
For example, I'm going to describe three people who fall under the description above, with a brief overview of what happened.
#1 Seemed to be a friend. Seemed to be a good friend. Some things about them vibed wrong to me, but that's more or less inevitable with anyone, and I'm sure there's a laundry list of things people could list about me that are the same way. I ignored those things, and unfortunately, in so doing, missed a lot of pattern-based red flags. I ignored the arrogance, the condescension, the lying, the victim complex, etc. until one day, out of the blue, with no change at all in the way we communicated with one another, he began to behave as though I was one of the many people he was convinced were out to get him. To this day, I have no idea why. I just know that the day before, he seemed to understand my meaning and intention perfectly well and we had no significant issues with each other, and the next, everything I said would be contorted into an attack, even if it had to be twisted up like some poor balloon animal to get there.
The downward spiral from there was horrible. There was literally nothing I could say or do that was not taken as an attack. Every choice I made -- on the game or RL -- was somehow focused on him, in his perception. I think it's safe to say that's pretty ridiculous for someone to think, but that was the situation I found myself in. I couldn't log in or out of the game without an extended critique of precisely why I must have done so. I would be told not to speak to the person, then asked a question by them, and if I didn't answer because I'd been told not to speak to him, he'd yell that I was disrespecting him by not answering. If I answered, I would be told I was disrespecting him by talking to him at all. (Meanwhile, if I asked him to leave me alone for a little bit, he simply ignored it. I would get yelled at for not answering him immediately if I was AFK doing my RL job.)
The final analysis I heard from him on all of this was so divorced from reality I literally can't even begin to fathom how he got there, and I still have no idea why any of it happened. I don't need to shower this person in scathing wrath and venom, but I absolutely want nothing to do with them in my life going forward, in or out of character.
#2 Pretended to be someone they absolutely were not, OOC. Actively and aggressively pursued a relationship for roughly six months until I even caved to a hug. It got bigger from there, hitting on a moment of weakness so thoroughly bizarre it would take too long to ever even start to explain -- needless to say, it worked. Cue eight years -- to the day, believe it or not -- of some of the worst head games I've ever experienced.
Then he just never showed up. Vanished. From the kind of life he claimed he was leading, I had genuine cause to believe he was dead. (@WTFE remembers the drama of this dude, I'm sure.) To this day I couldn't tell you if, when he showed up again and came clean about who he actually was, I was so relieved that the person I cared about was actually alive that I somehow managed to overlook the fact that the person I actually cared about was just a construct in the first place.
I tried the empathy route, because the empathy route actually wasn't hard at all; as much as some of us joke about our perpetual awesomeness, I would sincerely doubt there's a single one of us who has never been dissatisfied with themselves and wished they could be someone else, someone they thought was somehow better than they really are. I won't even pretend that doesn't apply to me enormously from time to time, either. While most of us wouldn't make the same choice he did, myself included (I actually have a pathological honesty problem, yes, problem), some of us have. Some of the people I consider among the best of us, most of the time, have made the same choice.
It's because we all do fuck up sometimes. Sometimes we're selfish. Sometimes we're weak. Sometimes we're stubborn or pig-headed (hi) or blind to our own behavior and even if we were thoroughly adept at self-examination -- which few people are -- we saw no reason to apply it at that one critical time, to that one critical choice. We all fuck up. It is important to remember that.
One of the key aspects of healing this kind of break when it occurs is realizing the mistake, and internalizing that lesson. The people who have made the same fuckup around here? There are plenty I still consider to be among the best of us, and people I would not hesitate to count as friends -- even good friends -- and go to bat for, help with whatever I could on game or off. The difference is, they realized: this did more harm in the long run than the temporary gains it won me, including real harm to myself.
This guy didn't. Years into this disaster, someone came to me from out of nowhere. Someone who was being lied to, just as I was. Another false identity seemingly designed to appeal just to that other person, another years-long target of mind games and emotional manipulation. I was shocked. With all he and I had been through, I genuinely thought nothing could shake me. He'd 'cheated' plenty of times, accused me of the same even though I never had (I can be loyal long past any rational degree of reasonable sense in regard to the people I care about), and so on. None of that broke me like this did. Nothing, frankly, could compare to having to look 'me, the girl afraid the person she cared about was dead' in the eyes, and tell them: it isn't the first time he's done this.
And I felt responsible. Even now, I feel responsible. I wonder if the empathy and forgiveness somehow allowed him to think what he did was OK on some level -- which is, I know, far more responsibility than I should take on myself here, when he's the one actively pursuing the awful behaviors. I still do it. I remember what it felt like to be that 'me', and I would not wish that feeling on the person I hate most in the world.
When last we spoke of it, he claimed he had felt bad lying to me, but not the other person, and that he'd done the same to others before he met either of us for several years and felt no guilt for what he'd done to them, either. This did not make me feel special. It only made me feel more guilty. It didn't, somehow, make what he did all right. It only confirmed he could not ever, ever be trusted, even if I was this magic special person who he felt bad for lying to. (And let's be real here, what are the odds of that? Oldest trick in the book: "But you're different!")
So empathy, understanding, and even the best-intentioned attempts to forgive... they can backfire. I don't say this to discourage anyone from making the attempt. I say this because that? That was hell. I say this because I don't want to see anyone else go through that.
I ran into this person on Shang, and he's the reason I don't play there, now. When I went to TR, he followed. He came to BITN, too. All of the stalky/controlling behaviors he had become accustomed to getting away with on Shang were fairly glaring to folks around me on TR and on BITN. Things he thought he could explain away, or that there was nothing wrong with, everyone around me could see: this is not all right, surr, please let us do something to get rid of him.
And really? I owe them an apology for not letting them, because I was afraid of the torrent of abusive crap I'd get from him if anyone reacted at all, or even somehow let on that they knew there was a problem. That's the level of 'terrified doormat' we're talking about, and that was just, what... 5-6 months ago, tops?
#3 ...is complicated. While the previous situations are over and done with and I have no reason to engage with those people again (thankfully), this one is ongoing. There have been lies. There has been a lot of damaged trust, a lot of frustratingly and needlessly shady nonsense. Thing is, one hell of a lot built that trust in the first place -- and that, ultimately, counts for more. This person was there through it all with #1, and for about half of #2, and is, I can say without overstating the matter in the slightest, is why I am still here at all and not ashes mixed into the dust in a suburban Delaware side yard and the sand and pebbles on a beach in Cape May. (This is not an easy thing to admit, but it is true.)
Even so, #3, when called on shit, does not evade. #3 owns their shit. Admits it. Actively works toward means of making it right, which is not always easy, even when it is not easy.
It's probably easy to see why #3 will get every shred of effort I can manage to work toward a positive 'forward', just as surely evident why #1 and #2 no longer have a place in my life, and are no longer welcome in it, whether they're forgiven or not.
Ultimately (and unfortunately), for many of us, shit will go wrong with the people who do matter that we've met through this hobby. Having been involved for twenty years now, I count myself lucky to have had only three of these that have gone into the deep waters. The ones I actively bitch about? The Jeurgs and the Rexes and the Spiders? Relatively speaking, even with the thousands of dollars in damage Spider did to my actual RL house, they're footnotes, by comparison.
As for the people who don't mean much, they're fairly easy to make a fair call about -- just figure out how much you're willing to trust them and with what, overlook the rest as best as you can, and keep going.
Sometimes, empathy won't work. Sometimes, forgiveness will be taken as permission. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is walk away, and do your best to forget. Scream if you have to. Vent if you have to. Get the cringe out, or the rant, or whatever else -- but keep going, even when that damned sword feels like it's going to cut your fingers off sooner or later and you're gonna fall a long way, and hard.
As much as this community can be a petty collection of bitchy whiners and grudgewank rantophiles, I will honestly -- and with no small measure of thanks -- say it has helped. The folk with less than wholesome intent, like examples #1 and #2, will do their damndest to isolate you, because it gives them more control. While I have not really mentioned them here much -- and if so, have made a point of doing so without names and somewhat obliquely -- especially compared to some others, the simple fact that there is a place where people can share their gripes, happy moments, goals, and concerns in the most general of ways is an enormous help.
While we can get petty and demanding and bitchy, it's still a baseline that's grounded in more than one control freak's perspective. Never underestimate that shit; it's actually priceless.
So while it's laudable to look at ways you can increase your empathy, accept apologies, offer forgiveness, apologize yourself for your own mistakes or choices you've made that have done someone harm (intentional or otherwise), repair damaged connections, or otherwise work toward all of those best-intentioned ends, please do make sure to take the time to learn from and then forgive yourself for your anger, your pettiness, your bitchy moments, your mistakes. Learn from them first, and accept and internalize that they were/are mistakes, but do it. (I could go into reasons why from 'guilt makes us do stupid shit/tolerate what we never should as a perceived penance' to 'nobody actually wants to read blurt like this and it's best to not let it get to that point in the first place', but I don't think I need to at this point, right?)
