Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning

[Catsmeow]

@Sunny - I thought the same thing. I was like, wait. He was 17?

[Pondscum]

@deadculture said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Since someone prodded me so I do a charity work here, this is your community alert:

Custodius plays at Arx.

Here's his char.
http://play.arxmush.org/character/sheet/1983/

Caveat emptor.
You're welcome.

Ahahaha. Haha. Hahahahaha.

Typical Custodius character marched out again, complete with typical PB pic just to appeal to the girlies. I don't have enough Hahaha's in me for this. Good luck Arx.

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Ha.

[WTFE]

@Catsmeow said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Sunny - I thought the same thing. I was like, wait. He was 17?

He claimed to have been 17. Pretty much anything Custodius claims is self-serving and designed to make him the injured party. There is no evidence he was or wasn't 17 at the time.

[WTFE]

@Sunny said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

How long ago was the CM stuff?

Around the year 2001. Before you go off about how that's a long time ago, however, I'd suggest you re-read the second-last paragraph of my little rant.

[Sunny]

@WTFE said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Sunny said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

How long ago was the CM stuff?

Around the year 2001. Before you go off about how that's a long time ago, however, I'd suggest you re-read the second-last paragraph of my little rant.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that asking a question for the purposes of clarification was so offensive. I was curious, so I asked. I suggest you re-read my post. All of it, it's not very long.

[WTFE]

@Sunny said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that asking a question for the purposes of clarification was so offensive. I was curious, so I asked. I suggest you re-read my post. All of it, it's not very long.

Nah, s'all good. Custodius tends to build a layer of fangirls around him when he operates and one of their favoured lines of attack is to repeat his "I've changed" mantra on his behalf. Sorry for misconstruing your motive.

[lordbelh]

I've heard of this Custodius person, and glanced over countless posts bitching about him and detailing various depravities. As I sit here with the idea that he's not only on a game I'm playing on, but taken a roster character in close proximity to my own, I keep thinking: Wow, this is a bit surrealistic, isn't it?

The Firan thread was always something of an amusing side show and a general warning of the pitfalls of RP to me, rather than anything I actually took very seriously. So many things were so obviously fucked up there that to take too many lessons from it risks stepping just as wrong on the opposite side of the scale.

I suspect I'll keep RPing as I have been (I'm enjoying the game, which is neither perfect nor the game I would have likely made, but still fundamentally very enjoyable), since quitting any game over one player I don't even know is never going to be an option. Nor is abruptly cutting off/changing my IC interactions with someone who is part of my organization going to happen.

Still, I do consider myself now warned. While I've a habit of giving people a chance regardless of their reputations (I was warned about @Pondscum but personally I've had nothing but positive interactions with her, for example), when someone gets as consistently bad rep as Custodius it inevitably (and should) influence your decisions.

I suppose since @Apos and @Kanye-Qwest both played on Firan, they'd be as well suited as any to make an informed decision. Assuming its not a false flag. I mean, they've happened before.

[Sunny]

Yeah. Forewarned is forearmed. I've personally never had issues with him on the games we've been on at the same time, but none of them were the places that went up in flames, either. Either his usual MO may not have worked, the conditions weren't right for him to destroy, or whatever? I don't know. I think with a reputation this extensive it's absolutely worth being mindful, but with my personal experience being in opposition to what a lot of folks say, and considering that many of the folks that say these things are folks I have had problems with...well. I'll be mindful, be aware -- as I always am, with this guy and a couple of other purported bad actors -- and that's that. I couldn't advocate tossing him off of a game, and honestly hope staff on Arx don't go there.

At the same time, there are many, many people who could say the above about Spider. I'm well aware of it, and it's why I lend the weight to this that I do rather than dismissing it out of hand.

(ETA: Then again, the games I have supposedly been on with him in the past, I am not 110% sure it was him and not one of the false flags, so that could also be the reason I didn't have problems with him. Because it wasn't him. ^^)

[surreality]

I handled his app when Firan went poof and he was migrating to TR.

As chirpy overworked OMG HOW MANY APPS ARE IN THE QUEUE?! admin lass at the time, you would think not a thing in the world could possibly stand out because there were a pile of people totally new to the system to help out, and set up.

Dude stood out.

Boy, did he ever. While pretty much everyone else was grateful for the help, eager to learn, and otherwise open to listening to what they needed to look for/set up (which I was usually happy to do for people), he was... special.

He'd made a character that was born amidst a number of cold war conflicts, I forget if it was in Eastern Europe or Western Russia -- either way, he had a (for TR) medium length BG going on about what he was doing throughout that time.

And then he asked for help with it, and if it was all right. I read it over, said it looked fine, it was already more than most people write by a large margin so he didn't need to worry about the length.

At which point he tells me I should be grateful and thank him for the history lesson I got while reading it, shouldn't I.

Excuse me?

I was alive then. I am an old cow. I was in the latter half of high school when the wall came down, grew up during the Cold War, and was old enough to be well aware of the news, politics, and the state of hostilities at the time. One of my gaming buds was a low level US Army intel guy at a listening post out there back then and we've all heard the stories he's told us (the ones he's allowed to pass along, obvs) who managed to hear a thing to make sure he got leave to be there on site when that shit happened, because that was going to be the party to end all parties for anyone in his age range especially, being in his mid-20s at the time. Fuck, I've even been to a handful of the actual places in Russia and Eastern Europe he listed in the background RL.

If this pompous little bitchboy thought he was schooling me on anything, he had another think coming. The phrasing was incredibly insulting and condescending; it was pretty glaring as a bullshit negging-style attempt to assert dominance over what he must have considered a 'friendly and helpful must mean stupid' female staffer -- and this was just 2 or 3 years ago.

He got a very polite but firm, "I am well aware of the history described in your background, having been alive and old enough at the time to understand the situation."

So there's a more current warning, y'all.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality I vaguely recall reading an app similar in its historical setting, and the arrogance of the author, to this when I was Stalingrad. Apparently saying "Yes, I know. I was there" prompted them to not bother... I'm not saying it was he Himself, but my memory was stirred.

[surreality]

(Apologies for this tangent.)

@Tinuviel I was taking AP American History that year, too -- so our teacher (who had long been one of the people on the team that actually constructs the test for the whole country at that time, no less) literally dropped our curriculum, told us, "Just read the book for the test, we are going to talk about this until everyone is out of questions and discussion for the next few weeks, this is more important than the test, and not as your teacher, but as a historian, it's on me to make sure you know why."

Dude was awesome. We lurved him. He was more interested in us understanding history than teaching to the test. ("Read that study guide, I wrote it, dammit!" <-- really.) He did things at random, like an extra credit pop quiz to get an idea of what people knew already early on in the year and what he still needed to go over more in depth with us on, by saying, "Take the class and write what you know about any of the lyric lines in this, which had come out and dominated the radio for ages, line by line, and for each line of the song or incident mentioned you can write a solid essay style paragraph about, you can buy back a lost point on a test for the rest of the year."

I repeat: dude was awesome. Everybody needs a that guy.

[Arkandel]

I guess when I asked "should people be banned on games for past behavior elsewhere?" I was really merely showing off my prophetic powers.

[surreality]

@Arkandel said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I guess when I asked "should people be banned on games for past behavior elsewhere?" I was really merely showing off my prophetic powers.

Seriously.

Though 'being a pompous asshat' is not enough to warrant a ban, IMHO, let alone a pre-ban. That tale is just passed along as a reference to something that is a bit brow-arch-worthy that's more recent than @WTFE's accounts of douchebaggery.

[Arkandel]

@surreality I dunno. I mean I've literally no horse in this race as I'm neither playing on Arx nor have I ever met Custodius in any form.

But if enough players view another as the devil and he is a douche... it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of chaos and mayhem. Especially for a game like Arx which by all accounts so far was mostly drama-free.

[WTFE]

@lordbelh said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I've heard of this Custodius person, and glanced over countless posts bitching about him and detailing various depravities. As I sit here with the idea that he's not only on a game I'm playing on, but taken a roster character in close proximity to my own, I keep thinking: Wow, this is a bit surrealistic, isn't it?

The Firan thread was always something of an amusing side show and a general warning of the pitfalls of RP to me, rather than anything I actually took very seriously. So many things were so obviously fucked up there that to take too many lessons from it risks stepping just as wrong on the opposite side of the scale.

Not just Firan. He destroyed a Fading Suns game (can't recall the name) and, indeed, it was while he was in the process of doing that that I first interacted with him (via Mr. Bane who was then his BFF) in IM and on a social MU*. (I want to say it was M*U*S*H but it may have been that pretentious place that banned anybody from WORA.) And he's been sighted on quite a few other games being up to his old tricks whenever the staff wasn't forewarned and forearmed.

The man is poison. He kills games dead in much the same way that VASpider does.

[ThugHeaven]

He sounds like the Mu* version of Donald Trump.

[Kanye Qwest]

@WTFE said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Meg said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

They have an easy application

They want an email for application. That's an instant "nope!" here. On two grounds:

1. I don't know them from a hole in the ground. I'm not going to hand them my email.
2. If(f) they think this somehow "secures" things they're too stupid to staff.

I don't know (or care) if #2 is true or not. #1 is sufficient grounds for turning and walking away.

Please feel free to keep not applying, if this is your sentiment.

As for Custodius, if he tries to ooc bully another player or pulls any sort of rule-bending, cheating bs, he'll be gone. If he doesn't, great!

[Thenomain]

@Tehom said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@WTFE said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@Meg said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

They have an easy application

They want an email for application. That's an instant "nope!" here. On two grounds:

1. I don't know them from a hole in the ground. I'm not going to hand them my email.
2. If(f) they think this somehow "secures" things they're too stupid to staff.

I don't know (or care) if #2 is true or not. #1 is sufficient grounds for turning and walking away.

I am honestly confused how anyone could ever imagine that an email would be anything more than a convenience for automating the application process so that a GM doesn't have to be on hand.

Because there have been several times in the past where people have taken those email addresses and abused the trust of the people who've asked for them. We here, esp. us dinos like WTFE and myself, have been over this and we can't come up with a considerately valid reason why having the email in the first place has more benefits than risks.

I'd be happy to waive it if someone is unwilling to provide an email, though I'd wonder why they wouldn't just google 'temp email' and save both of us time.

There is something that saves everyone even more time: Not needing s system to validate over email to being with. This is how Mushes (et al.) work.

As a coder, I would then be able to get other things done. If the email address is used for "is a person" except then you're ignoring fake email addresses, then it's helping nobody. It's a hoop that nobody cares about. So why have it?

I don't suspect the answer is much more than habit. It seems like a very Mudlike requirement, though I honestly don't know why.

[Kanye Qwest]

Ahhh, @Thenomain, swanning into the thread riding a vapor wave of superiority, shitting on things. Much like a real swan, I guess.

[Kanye Qwest]

And way to edit out what you originally said! I mean, truly, way to go. It was pretty shitty.