Recent Absence

A few people have been asking why I haven't been around CPM recently, and I'm sorry for not explaining sooner. It's a bit unpleasant for me, but I hope I can clarify things here.

Recently, I was desacked. I don't protest the fact that I was desacked. The way it was explained to me, I agree it's probably for the best. Heck, I've even requested to be desacked in the past, but was told to keep it. This isn't me being upset over losing my sack. I am extremely upset over the way it was done, though. I won't go into details here, I'm sure if you'd like to talk to one of the sacks or me personally we can go into it further - in fact I encourage anyone who would like to know to do this. Better to know what happened than wonder and let false rumors spread. In short I feel that from a leadership perspective, it was handled poorly. From a friendship perspective, it was very inconsiderate.

I was also told that a number of people in the linkshell have difficulties with me. I wasn't aware of any of this until I was told, and I'd like to ask anyone who does to please let me know what they are privately. I'm not really interested in defending myself or making explanations at the moment, I'd just like to hear any grievances there may be so I know what I need to work on. I do apologize if it will be a bit hard to know if I'm around, since with the matter stated above and the knowledge that I'm making difficulties for people, I will be avoiding CPM for a while. I simply don't feel comfortable here at the moment. I'll be on IMs and probably around in-game on Muirnin or Lyre if anyone would like to get ahold of me, or you can always ask Verence if I'm around if you see him.

I've already talked to you one on one months ago on why I felt you shouldn't be a sack. In short, you don't act like a sacked member should and when I addressed this directly to you your response was nothing short of "well I *am* a sack though, so get over it". Granted I was being a major asshole to you at the time, but the fact that you couldn't handle me on your own, despite supposedly being able to as a sack was one reason I felt you shouldn't be.

Secondly a sacks major purpose is supposed to be fostering the health of RP. You only ever demonstrated, at least on my end, concern for yourself and the small group with which you were directly involved with, about 4 people altogether. Furthermore I specifically remember an incident a long, long while ago wherein I attended an RP'd Leviathan run and afterward was asked IC by you to wait outside while you discussed private Windurstian matters. This discussion went on 45 minutes, with my sitting out there, alone, not having any fun, and people were ready to quit by the time you had ifinished. This was not the only time such an incident occurred to me or others.

I understand that is something that your character would do given that situation, but what your character would do in a given situation does not always make for good RP. If an RPer is working to exclude others from a situation while saying "but it's what my character would do!" that's not being a good RPer, it's just being a selfish one. When these situations arrive it is for the better to slightly modify your actions to accommodate for everyone having a good time.

RP is about having fun, bottom line, and I feel you are more concerned with writing the chronicle of Mhuirnin than you are fostering good RP all around, which is what sacks are for. I feel you'll make a better CPM member than a better CPM sack.

Really though, I think you are in a better position now than you were, you've been relieved of the expectations of a sack, thus you are free to RP anyway that you wish. Or you can fly off the handle every now and then like me. It's great.

I was going to stay off this issue until I knew more, and I still intend to. However, I will adress an issue I find glaring in the post above.
A good portion of the roleplaying I myself have managed to do in CPM has been due to Mhuirnin's initiative on the matter.
My characters have been involved because she chose to involve them.
Hells, before the timechanging storyline my character was outright ignored by most other people, especially in character. Though a large portion of this blame falls to my own character, but I hadn't a gripe. It was, after all, in character.
The majority of what happens in Windurst with the timeshift plot now is by her initiative. Now that may be a 'group of 4 people', but I would wager a guess this is because there's only so many characters in Windurst to interact with.
So I really can't see where this 'stifling of RP' comes from.
Of course I haven't been here long enough to tell of what happened before, but as for what I see at the moment?
I have to say I disagree with your point Sabriel.

I somewhat agree with your point about 'bending your character to make with the good RP'. But for the first point - there's only so much you can bend a character before the concept is ruined (this is all that was wrong with Sphinx, coincidentally), and for the other I haven't really seen Mhuirnin be that bent on how to play her character that she hasn't come up with excuses outside her own char not to include others.

I also apologize for the points in my post where I may fail to make sense, but I'm tired, and my day wasn't well-suited for this to begin with.

Mhuirnin wrote:From a friendship perspective, it was very inconsiderate.

This worries me because we were specifically trying to dispel the notion of sackholdership as a club of my personal friends. Friendship shouldn't be considered when making business decisions. I feel this sets our cause back a bit.

Sphinx wrote:A good portion of the roleplaying I myself have managed to do in CPM has been due to Mhuirnin's initiative on the matter.
My characters have been involved because she chose to involve them.

You'd be part of that small group I was talking about then.

Sabriel wrote:You'd be part of that small group I was talking about then.

Of course, I didn't suggest to say I was the only one so included.
However, there's plenty of instances where I haven't been included - for character-reasons, I'm sure you understand - where I wished I could have been. As a further point, you'll note that the plot suggestion she made to the plotline thread here is, in fact, open to all players - all nations. Even at the cost of a little credibility to the ICly reasons as to why the expedition is pulled off in the first place.

But yes, I didn't want to make this an argument, so I shan't. I'm sure you have as much right and cause for your opinions as I have to mine.
I just wanted to express mine, is all.

Well, I was hoping to keep this off the boards, but if it's to be made public then I suppose I ought to make an answer lest my silence be taken as the wrong one... I'd like to again state though, I was sort of hoping to avoid public drama when I requested privacy. If people think it would be better served to post here then by all means, do that instead.

Ayvaen wrote:This worries me because we were specifically trying to dispel the notion of sackholdership as a club of my personal friends. Friendship shouldn't be considered when making business decisions. I feel this sets our cause back a bit.

I don't really see the difficulty as we were both leaders AND friends. Separate interests, and I think both categories saw problems fairly independantly. Besides, I don't think that's been a concern for a while now? I didn't know it was still a worry, sorry.

As for your concerns Sabriel, I'm not really sure what I could say that wouldn't come across as me arguing I should have kept my sack. I do disagree with a number of things you've said but we've discussed them already in the past and if you feel that my answers and counterexamples weren't sufficient then, I don't really suppose giving them again now would help anything. I am sorry if that's how I've come across to you, though.

I debated for a while about posting this, but I decided in the end that I might as well. While friendship is important, and is part of what keeps the shell healthy, it's important not to confuse being a sackholder with being someone's friend. As Ayvaen stated, being a sackholder is like being part of a business; saying that, "From a friendship perspective, it was very inconsiderate," has, in my mind, no place in this discussion. Unless you were desacked for purely personal reasons, then the decision was reached because the other sacks believed it was for the betterment of CPM as a whole, and not because they don't value you or your friendship. I'm friends with my co-workers outside of the office (or I was when I was working, anyway) but I wouldn't expect that to stop them from firing me if it was necessary. I do know how you feel, speaking as the only other active member of CPM to have also been desacked, however I believe that in both cases the overriding concern of the other sackholders was for the health and wellbeing of CPM, which is how it should be.

That being said, I do essentially agree with Sabby's statements about your RPing style. To my view, you do tend to create characters that you think would be a lot of fun lorewise and characterwise to RP out, but which don't necessarily lend themselves well to creating interaction between yourself and the other members of the shell. As he said, this is perfectly fine for someone who is a normal, active member, but can be problematic in someone whose responsibilities include fostering and growing RP. I also need to disagree with the way you brought this to the public's attention. I understand that you don't wish for any drama to come about from this, but encouraging people to talk privately to either yourself or the sacks about what happens tends to have the opposite effect. That's how rumors get started; better to have it all stated out in the open so that people know the truth, rather than wondering and gossiping about it behind closed doors.

I guess if it's to be public, I'll keep making answers, then. Given that the linkshell policy in the past has been "Don't talk about it PERIOD, and don't ask unless you REALLY want to know" and that current linkshell policy is "Keep your drama off the public channels," my aim with the request was trying to minimize impact and follow linkshell rules. I actually thought I was being fairly progressive, but if you'll note, in my last post I also said that if people thought it better to post here that they do so. Also note that I encouraged people to talk to EVERYONE involved to get a complete picture. I kind of resent your implication that I was fostering gossip, actually. ^^;

Alveen wrote:...it's important not to confuse being a sackholder with being someone's friend.

Well, yes. I don't think I have here, like I said, I don't argue the decision itself. But when afterwards I say "Hey, the way this was done was pretty upsetting," and get told basically "Too bad, go cry about it." Well... That's not a leadership concern anymore. That's something else.

Alveen wrote:...but which don't necessarily lend themselves well to creating interaction between yourself and the other members of the shell.

I made Tahni specifically because there was a need for more Windurstian authority officials and to facilitate the Fenrir angle of the plot. Yes, it was also out of frustration at how difficult S is to play at times, but I don't think it's really an example of making a character that doesn't lend itself to interaction. I made her to fill a noted linkshell need. Notice how she's the driving force behind the Diabolos RP, and probably will be several others before I'm done with her.

Similarly, Muirnin is hardly an introvert. She's friends with many in the linkshell ICly, and I use her to trigger RPs fairly often. Lyre was also quite active at stirring up linkshell-chat RPs in the standard timeline and was beginning to get involved with several people which was spawning mini-plots. I won't go as far as to say "I started lots of plots" because I didn't, I started a few. But I don't RP either of those characters with a lore perspective, I RP them with an interaction perspective. The REASON I picked up Lyre was so I could interact more in places and with people maybe Muir wouldn't be able to.

Please don't take this the wrong way since I'm not trying to be aggressive or accusative, but you took a pretty long absence from the linkshell and haven't been very active in RPing for a very long time now. Do you think maybe it's possible that you don't have a complete picture of the RP that's been going on for the past while? I understand that the way I RP may not be to everyone's tastes, but I do feel I've made an effort to involve people. Perhaps not as great as one a sack should have made, but I do think implications of me being insular aren't wholly true.

Mhuirnin wrote:"Too bad, go cry about it."

If I said that to you or anything close, feel free to quote it directly on the forums (assuming you include the context), because I'm sure I said nothing like that. Maybe I wasn't as apologetic as you'd like, but I certainly didn't do anything like that, and I don't appreciate my complex comments being boiled down to one phrase which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I reviewed my logs to find it and found that I'd misread something you said. You're right, I'm sorry. It was "I'm having a hard time feeling sympathy over this," but it was in the context of how the previous discussion hadn't gone well.

I think the whole matter is a case of overreaction from EVERYONE.

Ayv, you're pretty heartless sometimes with how you lay things out. Try some sensitivity and pull the stick out of your ass when addressing things in public.

Muir, you're grossly over-reactive to perceived emotional slights and don't know when to give up sometimes. Mellow out.

Sab, you bitch about EVERYONE, including Ayv, Xene, and I'm sure me. Don't be surprised if people dismiss your complaints.

Alv, you're not in much position to talk. Muir stopped trying to include you in RP after you told her you didn't even LIKE roleplaying anymore and furthermore didn't like HER.

Sphinx, your difficulties are of your own design, but you've kind of already admitted that yourself so I don't really have much to add there.

Verence, you're a short-tempered inconsiderate bastard and you don't know how to keep your mouth shut. I forgive you though because you're a terribly sexy beast.

There, everyone happy now?

Make love to me Verence, make love to me now.

Well, that's pretty much it. Vere sums everyone up right there x.x

In any case, for my view on this, I really don't know who to tell what to, because lately I'm in no position to do things because I still feel I've done some bad in the LS and made a fool out of myself without even noticing, but what I'd like to say is (who no one should take that much seriously since after all I'm a bit out of touch with the RPing)

...I really can't say a thing about this because I don't know the full story, but from what I see, I think that Vere is just...right. I mean, everyone's over-reacting so much, but at least we all begin saying Sorry now. Muir's done quite good, but I'm really not sure about how the pearl-sack handles things in the shell, so I really can't say much about her as a pearl-sack.

Aaand, forgive the wording; my mind's quite blasted atm.

Posting in a thread.