Open Letter of Apology Regarding My Previous Posts
Sept 10, 2013 15:04:00 GMT -8
Ikon, Jenn, and 2 more like this
Post by Thornstar on Sept 10, 2013 15:04:00 GMT -8
Dear people-who-watched-me-implode-suddenly,
Since I was so public about airing my feelings of anger towards a group of players before, I feel it's also right that I publicly make amends to those people. I had a bad day. A really bad day. And it was compounded by lack of communication. I reacted to the situation and what I was told in a way not fitting a member of this community. Since I made you all witnesses to my invalid statements, and can accept that I was wrong about my viewpoint, I want to share with you what I shared with them so you can see why all involved are back on good terms again.
Since someone bothered to raise their hand and point out that I was being unreasonable, I stopped and got the distance I needed. I hope that I can provide that same hand to anyone else feeling like I was feeling in the future. I had no idea how much I'd become wrapped up in procedure and how much I'd forgotten that the people I was denigrating had the same feelings and worries that I had. That, specifically, they'd been through the same situations I had. And further, that by continuing what was happening, we were dragging you all, players and staff, into the same nightmarish lack of actual information beyond whispered rhetoric. So. Since I was so open with my accusations, I want to be equally open with my apology.
The following is the text of the apology I sent to Sean, Paul, his staff, and the current staff. I hope you all will accept it as they have.
So, First, I'm bad at this.
I'll just let that hang out on it's own and move on.
I guess I need to really start by saying that I'm incredibly hurt right now, and It's been pointed out to me that I'm lashing out unreasonably. I guess I can see that, or at least I can accept it as fact that I can't see straight right now. I've felt besieged by Staff since I came back to play after taking a year off. I took the year off after I ran game, and partly wanted to clear my head of all the IC stuff I knew, and partly because I was exhausted by having been on staff for so long. When I came back, I jumped right in, had a great time, got shut down hard, and walked away from a character with zero satisfaction from the end of it. I came back in (again) right before you guys stepped onto staff and fucked around for a while playing the cagey advisor, opportunity struck, I advanced quickly and became Prince in a nightmare situation. ((I'm going to pause here and draw a real life connection to both what situation you walked into as staff, and what Brendan and his crew stepped into as staff, to be revisited later in this text.))
So since you guys aren't talking to me, and I'm not talking to you, we have a cold war going on that I'd like to step forward and stop before it not only drives more of a wedge between us personally, but becomes more of an issue radiating from us to others. I need to take a more responsible stance on this than I have at this point, but I didn't see that the way to do that was to contact you offline, and I posted a big, mean, throbbing response to what Paul wrote. I've made, and deleted, some horrible accusations against the group of you. I spent HOURS pounding out all my rage at the amount of time I put into trying desperately to stabilize the city IC and failed.
I got up this morning still mad and saw that Paul had hopped online and (in hindsight) courteously gone out of his way to explain what was going on from your group's end. Was I ready to see that? Not a fucking chance. But I acted like a fucking child about it, so zero points for Aaron, there. I had SO MUCH TO SAY TO YOU that I said it all at once, right out there in front of everyone because I wanted you to be as humiliated as I felt. I wanted your plans to fall apart like mine did. I wanted your tower to fall down right next to mine. I had all these brilliantly worded, hurtful barbs to spew. They were fitting with my view of my rightness, but not with the scope of importance I should be placing on this. ECC? It is just a game, no matter how much work you or I or anyone has put into it.
I deleted one thing, and had the other one deleted for me since it's in a locked thread. Some people (Let's call them 'the current staff') pointed out to me that I may have, in fact, been a giant fuckwit about how I reacted to what happened. The current staff is going to be getting a similar email, but with different specifics.
Once I take care of talking this out with you guys, who I've been monstrously shitty to, I'll be happy to address the game and apologize publicly, but I want you to understand that it's real before I go that route.
I'm not going to be throwing fuel on the fire and making any more comments about the situation from Saturday night, about the time you were on staff, about what your motivations were, about whether anything's fair, about whether I was right about anything at all. I'm done with it. I have to put it all behind me. I'm going to move forward and come back and play and just be a guy who does some things.
Now, onto the real apologizing.
As I've been at this game for more than half of my life, this month, and as I've been in the exact position you're in, I should have showed you a ton more empathy than I was capable of at the time. I should have, thus, extended that to not saying a goddamn thing until I had let my fuse burn, my powder blow, and the concussion stop. I'm so sorry for the venom I've vomited forth at you. Regardless of my feelings, my battered ego, my bruised whatever, that doesn't give me license, permission, or justification. I watched the strain in your faces for the last year while you staffed. I watched what I should have seen as our similarity eaten up by my petty disagreement. I lost the ability to take an objective stance on anything but that which was directly in front of me at the moment. I reveled in it for my own smallness' sake.
I didn't get this apology when I was in your position. Tough. I shouldn't have let that get to me. What's ultimately true here is that I don't want this thing that just happened to poison you against anyone like I let it do to me. So here I am.
I want you to know that you did the right thing in playing your characters how you did. I want you to know that you did the right thing in bringing your personalities into the stories you told last year. I want you to know that right now I feel more empathy for you than any other personal interaction we've had since I've known you. I don't just want you to know this. I NEED you to know this. I really want to sit down with you separately from this message and talk out more of what happened because if I feel this way about what happened, I'm sure that you feel pretty beat right now, and if I can help patch up some of the injuries that I needlessly and selfishly caused, then maybe it'll help me deal with what hurt me and with what hurt you at the same time.
I've been at this wall before. This time I want to break it down before it becomes permanent.
Sean came over and we talked things out last night. Paul was unavailable for in-person, but his acceptance was passed along. Others are filtering in to have this chat with me.
I'm open to addressing further issues if anyone would like to bring them to my attention via PM.
I'm also open to helping any of you get clarity and perspective on the things that have you feeling anywhere near similarly. I'm going to be away from the game itself for a while while all this settles in, but I'll be available online.
And I'll be back.
Thanks,
Aaron
Since I was so public about airing my feelings of anger towards a group of players before, I feel it's also right that I publicly make amends to those people. I had a bad day. A really bad day. And it was compounded by lack of communication. I reacted to the situation and what I was told in a way not fitting a member of this community. Since I made you all witnesses to my invalid statements, and can accept that I was wrong about my viewpoint, I want to share with you what I shared with them so you can see why all involved are back on good terms again.
Since someone bothered to raise their hand and point out that I was being unreasonable, I stopped and got the distance I needed. I hope that I can provide that same hand to anyone else feeling like I was feeling in the future. I had no idea how much I'd become wrapped up in procedure and how much I'd forgotten that the people I was denigrating had the same feelings and worries that I had. That, specifically, they'd been through the same situations I had. And further, that by continuing what was happening, we were dragging you all, players and staff, into the same nightmarish lack of actual information beyond whispered rhetoric. So. Since I was so open with my accusations, I want to be equally open with my apology.
The following is the text of the apology I sent to Sean, Paul, his staff, and the current staff. I hope you all will accept it as they have.
So, First, I'm bad at this.
I'll just let that hang out on it's own and move on.
I guess I need to really start by saying that I'm incredibly hurt right now, and It's been pointed out to me that I'm lashing out unreasonably. I guess I can see that, or at least I can accept it as fact that I can't see straight right now. I've felt besieged by Staff since I came back to play after taking a year off. I took the year off after I ran game, and partly wanted to clear my head of all the IC stuff I knew, and partly because I was exhausted by having been on staff for so long. When I came back, I jumped right in, had a great time, got shut down hard, and walked away from a character with zero satisfaction from the end of it. I came back in (again) right before you guys stepped onto staff and fucked around for a while playing the cagey advisor, opportunity struck, I advanced quickly and became Prince in a nightmare situation. ((I'm going to pause here and draw a real life connection to both what situation you walked into as staff, and what Brendan and his crew stepped into as staff, to be revisited later in this text.))
So since you guys aren't talking to me, and I'm not talking to you, we have a cold war going on that I'd like to step forward and stop before it not only drives more of a wedge between us personally, but becomes more of an issue radiating from us to others. I need to take a more responsible stance on this than I have at this point, but I didn't see that the way to do that was to contact you offline, and I posted a big, mean, throbbing response to what Paul wrote. I've made, and deleted, some horrible accusations against the group of you. I spent HOURS pounding out all my rage at the amount of time I put into trying desperately to stabilize the city IC and failed.
I got up this morning still mad and saw that Paul had hopped online and (in hindsight) courteously gone out of his way to explain what was going on from your group's end. Was I ready to see that? Not a fucking chance. But I acted like a fucking child about it, so zero points for Aaron, there. I had SO MUCH TO SAY TO YOU that I said it all at once, right out there in front of everyone because I wanted you to be as humiliated as I felt. I wanted your plans to fall apart like mine did. I wanted your tower to fall down right next to mine. I had all these brilliantly worded, hurtful barbs to spew. They were fitting with my view of my rightness, but not with the scope of importance I should be placing on this. ECC? It is just a game, no matter how much work you or I or anyone has put into it.
I deleted one thing, and had the other one deleted for me since it's in a locked thread. Some people (Let's call them 'the current staff') pointed out to me that I may have, in fact, been a giant fuckwit about how I reacted to what happened. The current staff is going to be getting a similar email, but with different specifics.
Once I take care of talking this out with you guys, who I've been monstrously shitty to, I'll be happy to address the game and apologize publicly, but I want you to understand that it's real before I go that route.
I'm not going to be throwing fuel on the fire and making any more comments about the situation from Saturday night, about the time you were on staff, about what your motivations were, about whether anything's fair, about whether I was right about anything at all. I'm done with it. I have to put it all behind me. I'm going to move forward and come back and play and just be a guy who does some things.
Now, onto the real apologizing.
As I've been at this game for more than half of my life, this month, and as I've been in the exact position you're in, I should have showed you a ton more empathy than I was capable of at the time. I should have, thus, extended that to not saying a goddamn thing until I had let my fuse burn, my powder blow, and the concussion stop. I'm so sorry for the venom I've vomited forth at you. Regardless of my feelings, my battered ego, my bruised whatever, that doesn't give me license, permission, or justification. I watched the strain in your faces for the last year while you staffed. I watched what I should have seen as our similarity eaten up by my petty disagreement. I lost the ability to take an objective stance on anything but that which was directly in front of me at the moment. I reveled in it for my own smallness' sake.
I didn't get this apology when I was in your position. Tough. I shouldn't have let that get to me. What's ultimately true here is that I don't want this thing that just happened to poison you against anyone like I let it do to me. So here I am.
I want you to know that you did the right thing in playing your characters how you did. I want you to know that you did the right thing in bringing your personalities into the stories you told last year. I want you to know that right now I feel more empathy for you than any other personal interaction we've had since I've known you. I don't just want you to know this. I NEED you to know this. I really want to sit down with you separately from this message and talk out more of what happened because if I feel this way about what happened, I'm sure that you feel pretty beat right now, and if I can help patch up some of the injuries that I needlessly and selfishly caused, then maybe it'll help me deal with what hurt me and with what hurt you at the same time.
I've been at this wall before. This time I want to break it down before it becomes permanent.
Sean came over and we talked things out last night. Paul was unavailable for in-person, but his acceptance was passed along. Others are filtering in to have this chat with me.
I'm open to addressing further issues if anyone would like to bring them to my attention via PM.
I'm also open to helping any of you get clarity and perspective on the things that have you feeling anywhere near similarly. I'm going to be away from the game itself for a while while all this settles in, but I'll be available online.
And I'll be back.
Thanks,
Aaron
