maziel
staff puppet account
Posts: 45
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Post by maziel on Mar 3, 2023 0:24:05 GMT -5
I'm the Deleted Member, formerly known as Hunted in this image. I started to think about all of the times I vented about the GDB dynamic after departing it in 2016 and realized that there was probably evidence of that here. After witnessing all sorts of GDB nonsense and interacting with him on the GDB 'open source' thread (the same one where he told my brother that he wanted to strangle him like he strangles his fag nephew before deleting it) back then and posting this on Jcarters board - it's literally the last time I participated in the GDB until this week (meaningfully at least, I can't actually check my GDB history). It wasn't the only reason my brother and I stopped engaging with folks on the GDB, but it was the last one and a pretty big reason. Pretty small in comparison to the stuff many others dealt with, but I have a very, very small tolerance for certain social constructs. Did briefly try and play Arm as recent as 2019, though, outside of the GDB, before getting too distracted with deploying overseas and whatnot. Anyways. Kind of crazy when the things that made you leave bring you back lol. If the GDB wasn't so moderation heavy and we were able to stand up for ourselves there, I don't think Malifaxis would have been as empowered as he was for so long. At least on that platform. He very much took advantage of that, amongst other things. So in your considerations of feedback, staff - if you see this - please consider that.
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TedCruz
staff puppet account
Posts: 13
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Post by TedCruz on Mar 3, 2023 7:45:07 GMT -5
The history of Shalooonsh callouts is pretty interesting, especially looking back at the responses of players and staff at the time. There's a clear pattern that shows staff and certain players were aware of Shalooonsh's abuse and, instead of dealing with the problem appropriately, opted instead to try and cover it all up by victim-blaming, equating absence of evidence with evidence of absence (all the while demanding increasing amounts of evidence), and just plain old trolling. Armageddon staff circles the wagons around a sexual harasser and abuser. (July 10, 2018) www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/8xrnzs/armageddon_staff_circles_the_wagons_around_a/My Armageddon experience: interesting game, strange community, paranoid and abusive staff. (December 5, 2019) www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/e6pzj3/my_armageddon_experience_interesting_game_strange/ArnageddonMUD: Got blamed/banned for staff's sexual harassment exposed in a Reddit thread (April 13, 2020) www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/g0eeib/arnageddonmud_got_blamedbanned_for_staffs_sexual/The same logic applies to general complaints about sexual harassment and abuse in general, not necessarily perpetuated by Shalooonsh, e.g. by an unknown perpetrator or by another player or staff member. Armageddon MUD: Promising but ultimately not for me. (March 2, 2018) www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/81gkij/armageddon_mud_promising_but_ultimately_not_for_me/Armageddon MUD: A Promising Game With Unavoidable Flaws (September 19, 2019)
Armageddon MUD is mainly unpleasant, and I feel sorry for the handful of people trying to make it better. (Review) (August 3, 2021)
I think players should start asking staff about how long they knew Shalooonsh was a problem, how many staff agreed with Shalooonsh being brought onto staff, and why Producers at the time of Shalooonsh's most recent hiring neglected the advice of former staff members and hired Shalooonsh onto the staff team anyway.
It's becoming increasingly easy to see why some former staff and players were disgusted with this game.
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Post by lechuck on Mar 3, 2023 8:16:57 GMT -5
I remember as far back as like 2010ish hearing of female players mentioning how he'd send them unsolicited emails. One player I talked to had stopped playing and one day he randomly sent her a mail asking what she was up to.
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Post by eukelade on Mar 3, 2023 12:02:54 GMT -5
I want to preface this by saying this isn't a very shocking or creepy or bad story compared to the things that happened to other players of this game. I wasn't sexually harassed or stalked (or if I was, I didn't notice so it may as well not have happened.) I was just treated in kind of a shitty, awkward way. I am going to describe this as a near miss, because I think that what happened to me was actually the best thing to have happened in this circumstance, now that I know more about everything that happened to everyone else. But anyway, I'll tell the story! Because telling stories about all this old stuff is what I'm doing these days! It's cathartic to explain all these things that happened which I haven't really talked about before.
Ok, when I was a baby staffer and in all honesty a baby human (very early 20s) Shalooonsh invited me to go to the renaissance festival w/ him and some of his friends, including his wife. We lived in the same state. I didn't know how old he was, what he looked like, or anything about him really other than he played some characters that were entertaining and paid a lot of attention to everything I was doing for some reason. I was also, and I cannot stress this enough, really, really dumb. So dumb. Looking back on everything that happened and all our interactions, I now realize he was probably being flirty/trying to get my attention. But I actually was too dumb to pick up on it, and therefore could not feel harm like someone might who was more keyed in to life. (Also, how dumb was I to agree to this in the first place??)
I let him know it would be hard for me to meet him downtown at the address he specified, I did not have a car, could I please have a reliable way to get in touch with him? Sure, he gave me his number and the address to meet him at. We would travel to the renaissance festival from there. Cool. I begin my epic journey to meet an internet stranger, taking taxis and busses and all sorts of things. I don't know why I wanted to. If I had to guess, I think I was lonely and wanted friends. I liked the renaissance festival and wanted to go. This was before smart phones were that common, so accessing the internet was not possible once I had left the vicinity of a computer. All I had was this number and an address.
Well, I made it to the address, knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked some more. Nothing! I called the number. Nothing. I left a voice mail! It was not returned. I found an internet cafe, logged in, and tried to find Shalooonsh on armageddon's immchat or aim. Nada. Friends, I'd been stood up! That was too bad (actually I'm so grateful now, thanks buddy) but there was nothing left to do but go home. (Unfortunately due to how difficult it had been to get to where I was going I ended up having a really harrowing adventure, including getting caught in a downpour while chased around town by a really weird old dude in the city. It was a bad day for me lol.)
Ok, so all that happened. I got home fine. Whatever. Shalooonsh wrote me an apology email, stating that he was entirely at fault and telling me that his friends were "too elitist" to meet an internet girl and he had to stand me up to keep the peace. I later found out that it was his then wife who was the main dissenter to my joining the group, rightly threatened by the idea of my presence at her husband's side. It is possible she knew his intentions were not pure. Thanks to Shalooonsh's ex wife for not letting me go to the renaissance festival with him! Even though I had a really bad day I am grateful.
Shalooonsh ended the email by asking me to meet him at a bar for drinks, but I had had enough by that point and declined to further pursue real life interactions with this person (I would end up crossing his path irl at other points, but that was to meet other friends and nothing happened.)
Of course all the in-game stuff is an entirely different matter, and his armageddon-based attentions persisted for many years to come. I could fill multiple pages with all the weird details, until he left staff & the game for the first time! When I learned he had come back, I did not like that, but I was also not playing anymore for other reasons. I had no idea about everything else that had happened with him until this week. I thought that other than being kind of a weird jerk to me with the renaissance festival thing, his bad behavior was entirely confined to in game matters. So, I really appreciate knowing about all the rest of it, thank you to everyone who said things and came forward.
The end.
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bebop
Clueless newb
Posts: 106
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Post by bebop on Mar 4, 2023 13:32:34 GMT -5
Here are some of my creepy stories from Shalooonsh/Malifaxis:
Circa mid 2000s Shalooonsh is playing a Kadian NPC called Bleys Kadius (not Blaze mind you, Bleys Kadius). I'm playing a pickpocket at the time and don't know this character is an NPC. I have little understanding of any OOC stuff regarding staff. I successfully pickpocket a small package from him. Despite the success he immediately turns to my character and tells her to give it back. OOC I am confused and don't understand how he knew what happened. My character runs away. He subsequently griefs her. Steals her VNPC child and has the templarate execute her. What a fun experience.
Then around 2011 I'm playing a bard that is having a romantic storyline that she fell for an elf. Unbeknownst to me the elf is Shalooonsh. I am fine keeping everything IC. However, using his staff knowledge he finds out who I play and hunts me down and begins to groom me. I am 23, he is 35 years old. He is playing a sponsored role as Sinjinn in the Akai Sjirr until Sanvean and other staff refuse to work him and remove him.
Around 2012 (before I go to live with him) I tell Shalooonsh that I have plans for a chest piece tattoo where I am going to get my favorite space ships. I tell him I'm going to get the Serenity (Firefly), the Swordfish (Cowboy Bebop) and the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars.) One day, he comes home and has a tattoo of the Serenity on his chest, in the exact placement I told him I wanted. When I'm shocked and point out that was my idea, he just laughs it off and never really acknowledges how weird that is.
During this time, everyone begins to suspect that this person is not so nice of a guy. So, he begins to tell people that he was r*ped and m**ested by a priest in his early age. This doesn't quite add up. This is triggering because I was severely abused by my Baptist church growing up in the south. His mother is an agnostic/paganistic hippy that never went to church, and certainly wasn't Catholic. Something isn't right. A year later, he finally admits to me it was all made up when I press him about the matter. I go into an immediate panic attack and call Val (the player), saying I feel like the walls are closing in and I've made a huge mistake and that I don't know this person at all. Clear pathological lies and living in a fantasy land all designed to induce sympathy. Anyway, Val talks me down from a massive panic attack wherein I no longer feel physically safe around this person.
I get out of the relationship, all of the other messed up things that I've already mentioned happened, happen and worse. I quit the game for roughly five or six years.
I come back to the game around 2018. I am shocked to see him back on staff. I start playing a rinther named Ruin. Immediately a character named Banker (the Gladiator champion) starts interacting with her all of the time. I immediately recognize this as Shalooonsh. He hones in on me instantaneously. His character is heralded by VNPC cheering. It's weird. My character avoids him and is generally a dick to him, he still tries to befriend her and give her things. At one point he even comments to my character that she's always a dick to him and he keeps helping her. Her response is... yeah, and? OOC I am thinking please leave me alone. My character (like everyone else's character at that time) is killed by Smoke the half-elf.
I then start to play the aide Ozy to Nektol. At that time we have - Banker (played by Shalooonsh) Vulture (played by Shabago) and Doyen Tovari (played by Katima). They're all kid of a dick to my aide. But, they all randomly die in the arena to spiders. At this point Shalooonsh could play anywhere. But what does he do? A Templar named Mykah pops up and suddenly Shalooonsh is playing his aide, right along my aide Ozy in the same clan. (I have screenshots of Shalooonsh admitting to playing these guys too around the time I called out Kitanius.) Great. Then suddenly all of the staff-avatar arena champions get rezzed and he's back to the role of Banker. All three staff are now playing "resource PCs" in the same damn clan and just playing them like actual PCs. Cool.
At that point I go play Rohatiph Vice Fale. Banker is rez'd and then again befriends my character immediately. I play Ro for about a year which is an exercise in misery. Around this time Shalooonsh takes a pic outside of my place of work/business and sends it to me on his staff Discord account. I'm uncomfortable and let staff know with no response.
Around the time of COVID (2020) my friend Belgiokiss came back, as many did. We were excited to play together and posted a pic with with one another (one of the only we had.) Shalooonsh (for obvious reasons) was cropped out. He lost it and started messaging her despite her asking him to never message her about me again. She blocked him. He then went onto her husband's Facebook trying to lure her back with sponsored roles. I sent these screenshots to staff too. No answer. Around this time my character Mei is stripped and flayed and staff tell me it's not torture and that the consent rules don't apply. Wonderful.
At some point I come back to the game, and I try to play a weird, rouge water mage called Mama Irrig. I go into Luir's. Guess who's there? You guessed it. Shalooonsh. Now he's running Luir's as an elf that was a former Akai S'jirr locked out of the Tuluki gates. He finds my character almost immediately and gives her a bunch of armor, because of course. That character dies to a black mantis in the scrublands near Tuluk. Why was there a mantis there? I don't know. So then I start playing a Sun Runner. Shalooonsh's elf is all up in our business like he's one of us while also staffing the SR. I quit the game again.
I come back to the game in 2021 because Tuluk is reopening. I am excite. I app in a northern templar and don't get the role. I'm bummed. I app the next best thing - a bard! I encounter a lot of sexism and harassment in game. The shadow artist docs are broken and make no sense. My character is being harassed by the other male Seeker. Brokkr assures me that as long as it's done secretly I can kill him. That's the new dynamic in Tuluk I guess? I plan this for RL weeks. During this time, Shalooonsh is obsessively playing with and animating around my character. Myself and another character kill the character doing the harassing. Then staff switch sides and tries to tell the templarate to be mad despite egging me on and assuring me this was fine.
Shalooonsh then does everything they can to get my character found out. They leave a massive stain on her apartment floor permanently so I can no longer have people over. Shalooonsh then puts me on a plot with spice moths, where one enters my character's arm. I tell him out of character, this is stressing me out, this isn't fun. It's making it unplayable. He ignores me. Great. I stop playing again. He stores my character and also loosely accuses me of meta-gaming and is monitoring me constantly. Around this time, I start dating my husband and Shalooonsh starts telling other players I'm a maneater and whore to try and dissuade him and interject into my personal life. It has been, at this point, a little under a decade since I've had any RL interaction with him but it keeps going. Fun! I quit again.
I come back in 2023. I'm told, hey avoid the south. Shalooonsh is playing a noble really ingrained there. I start playing a half-elf nobody for a few months before I'm ate by a mekillot. A northern Faithful/Templar role call opens and, wouldn't you know, I got it! I love this character. I've wanted to play this role for years. I am excited. However, as I mentioned in my last post... some how Kitanius Valika begins to know everything is happening. He harasses, obsesses over and hates my character despite me doing everything in my power to ignore him. I only speak to him directly in person when it's unavoidable. I quickly realize this is the southern noble I was warned about. It's so gross and jarring I speak to my staff member Wychokka about it. I'm asked if I want to store. I don't want to store. I want to play this game I love with the character I love dammit. It gets worse. Eventually the clan that Shalooonsh is staffing kills my character after months of gross, sexually derogatory comments about my character. We all know how that went. Great.
When I say this person has been using their IG platform to stalk and abuse me for years, I literally mean years and years and years. And I know I'm not the only woman he has done this to. I have so many creepy issues I've experienced. Some of them OOC or verging on such, and some IC as you can see here. It still saddens me that by calling this out I have been banned and silenced. I didn't deserve being on the receiving end of this for years. I was a good player with staff trust and karma but I get yeeted because I got tired of enduring the constant obsession, sexually derogatory comments and real life abuse I endured. I shouldn't have had to pick the game, or continuing to be abused. Sucks.
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bebop
Clueless newb
Posts: 106
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Post by bebop on Mar 4, 2023 13:54:05 GMT -5
Katima's history in being involved with Shabago and Shalooonsh and playing staff avatars alongside them is also interesting the more I think about it because in retrospect when I was playing my Faithful (Altair) I did not know how warehouse licensing worked. Instead of helping me she would encourage PCs that my character had strong relationships to seek licensing with the other templar. She would also coincidentally omit to those PCs that if they did that, the other templar would receive tax revenue and they'd be damaging our IC relationship. Therefore encouraging them to screw me over without them even realizing what they were doing. So ... that's interesting the more I think about it. I actually filed a complaint regarding this. I thought it could be an honest mistake, but now it just looks like more bias and favoritism. It just keeps getting more "interesting" the more I learn. If you aren't convinced there needs to be rampant transparency at this point then I don't know what to tell you.
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Post by eukelade on Mar 4, 2023 16:06:19 GMT -5
Here are some of my creepy stories from Shalooonsh/Malifaxis: Ugh I feel like I remember the pickpocket and her baby for some reason. I am sorry about what happened. This was so long ago but I was playing in Kadius when Bleys was ascendant and he loved my character and was always making things happen to/around her. But also every close male friend in the clan she had ended up dead due to him?? So mysterious??? Once he took both her favorite hunters (one was her best friend) out to a wezer den where they were stung to death and then came back and apologized to Alek for getting them killed. He spent IC years haunting her with echoes of the ghost/memory of her dead friend. Then another time he made her watch as he hatched wezer larvae in the still living body of another close friend while he was in a cage as a punishment for something they'd both done (he died obviously.) It was intense. the rest of your tales are on brand as well, this is a guy who just loved to barge into exciting clan matters as whatever self-insert he was running, be it pc or npc. The rezzed arena champion story is just wild to me. As a player you like to have an engaged storyteller at the helm DMing your shit. Everyone wants adventure and attention, it's flattering when your storyteller picks up on what you're trying to do and helps you roll that ball along. Whenever I played in a clan Shalooonsh was running, I was kept in a perpetual state of excitement and stress due to the near constant echoes and npc animations. I admit it, a lot of it was great for me. But I should have thought more about the other side of that coin and everyone who seemed to suffer if they crossed him or opposed what he was trying to do instead of rolling with it or reacting in a way that amused him. I don't think people who want to run clans should just ignore their players and what they're trying to do. Engagement is important in both big ways and small. But as a DM you can so easily cross lines when you start caring about your plot succeeding or players getting the better of you or letting your own feelings get in the way. Malifaxis was guilty of that in an enormous way.
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Post by eukelade on Mar 4, 2023 16:28:29 GMT -5
also the tattoo thing and the catholic priest thing ;-;
whyyyy
so sorry bebop
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Post by dumbplayer on Mar 4, 2023 16:36:47 GMT -5
Haha rocks fall, you die.
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delirium
Clueless newb
grumpy cat
Posts: 90
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Post by delirium on Mar 4, 2023 18:33:42 GMT -5
Haha rocks fall, you die. Also, Roc rocks fall, you die! fun on a bun!
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TedCruz
staff puppet account
Posts: 13
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Post by TedCruz on Mar 9, 2023 9:49:32 GMT -5
Interestingly, this shows up in the Armageddon MUD Wikipedia page's revision history:
18:13, 17 February 2023 2604:3d09:617e:4b00:cc06:6a2b:dbe6:e502 talk 18,956 bytes −474 →Reception: There are unproven accusations of sexual harassment that amount of slander, and the reference is a questionable reddit post only? Find a court document. It is morally bankrupt to assume guilt before proof. undo Tags: Reverted references removed
So, 7 days before Bebop's story was posted here, someone took the liberty of removing references to a Reddit post where someone detailed Shalooonsh's abuse towards them. Of course, I undid the revision and added a block of my own regarding the recent events. Feel free to tweak it as needed.
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Post by gringoose on Mar 9, 2023 10:50:58 GMT -5
Interestingly, this shows up in the Armageddon MUD Wikipedia page's revision history: 18:13, 17 February 2023 2604:3d09:617e:4b00:cc06:6a2b:dbe6:e502 talk 18,956 bytes −474 →Reception: There are unproven accusations of sexual harassment that amount of slander, and the reference is a questionable reddit post only? Find a court document. It is morally bankrupt to assume guilt before proof. undo Tags: Reverted references removed That's a lot of legalistic terminology about slander of someone's internet text game handle. It's fine to use the word slander as a colloquialism, but this is just intentionally using it as a legalism. We may be looking at Shaloonsh v. Armageddon Shadowboards here, and need to be careful lol. Now it makes sense why staff are silent about addressing people's complaints. They're just being sensible here and don't want to risk being sucked into a legal battle. This is the dumbest thing I've read since all of this started.
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jenki
Clueless newb
Posts: 139
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Post by jenki on Mar 9, 2023 11:07:00 GMT -5
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,337
Member is Online
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Post by mehtastic on Mar 9, 2023 11:14:31 GMT -5
At some point in 2015 or so the Arm community figured out you have a shot at discrediting someone by just asking for more and more proof until they give up. No one falls for it anymore because there have been so many complaints and where there's smoke, there's a fire. I wouldn't be surprised if qwerty / ForearmedLurker / Obtutus edited the Wikipedia page as part of his initiation for rejoining staff.
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