Hi, Lilpenpusher has asked me to post this in their stead.
Hello CM folk. I’ve been made aware of quite a few questions remaining in the room, be it simply due to my sudden disappearance from CO Council in the middle of a lore rewrite, my intentions with regards to this cban, and of course, the various questions surrounding the “reasons” for which I got cbanned.
I can’t respond to any of this personally (sadly) to help clarify and shed light on everything obviously, but Jooks has been kind (and brave) enough to volunteer to relay this message to you all in my name. I’ll try my best to remain civil here so that Management doesn’t decapitate them as they did me and several others.
Q: Is CO Lore dead now? You were the face of the new Third Fleet/Regiment stuff and it seems it’ll just die again, now.
A: No, CO lore is not dead- or at least, I hope it won’t die. It’s true that the Third Fleet revive was something entirely willed and stemmed by me, helped by helpful minds and hands such as Kaga and my fellow Councillors. I have been very eager to get all this lore out because I’m a major sucker for lore, and I’m glad people are afraid it’ll die because it means I probably created something people look forward to. Awesome!
Not long after my cban me and Karl (superreallycoolguy) exchanged on how to proceed with lore. The suggestion came up whether I, as the main creator of the Regimental lore, wanted it burnt and erased - but I didn’t want that, because it would have been a silly punishment that would have hit our COs and Community, not Management. Instead, I’ve handed over editing access to all my private lore docs and Regimental Chart graphic to Karl, and with him, the Council members. It is my expressed desire that they finish what little there was still to do, and hit the final home run for you all. I will remain in contact with my standing friends from Council, and remain here for them should they have any questions or want my input as the original creator of the lore. COs deserve proper, good lore like this and management won’t stop me from delivering that, in some form.
Q: Are you going to appeal this cban? Is there anything we can do to help?
I am not (officially) appealing my cban, no. The truth of the story is that the main thing keeping me with CM was CO Council work, as well as my recent obsession with character art. The game feels stale, repetitive, and frankly I never went into CM for fragging anyway. The game has continued to worsen for any type of support role, be they planetside or shipside, and I just don’t feel there is a place for me much anymore even if I were to come back.
That aside, if I somehow get unbanned, I might drop in as rifleman once in a blue moon to play with squaddie friends. But since so many OGs are getting banned nowadays due to the terrible direction CM is taking OOC, with all its excessive policing and whatnot, I don’t see that happening.
I am currently discussing alternatives with my friends, and will probably be hopping over and dipping my toes into other codebases.
Q: Were you warned at all before your cban?
Grim issued me a one-week forumban one day prior due to the leaked comment on the Yautja Jamaican thread. This means that, for all intents and purposes, I was already punished for that anyway.
I did not receive any formal warnings beyond that point.
I was told - after the cban - that I had “accumulated a plethora of infractions, but you accrued them so fast that it spiraled straight into a cban”. Obviously I find that theory/excuse to be laughable, if it even is true, but hey ho.
Q: Did you actually partake in doxxing Frozen at all?
No. In fact, I was the individual Grim covertly referred to in chat when he kept saying “one individual DMed us about it”. I was sent that comment by Frozen and decided to DM it to both Grim and Forest straight away, and had them investigate it. I had no part in it leaking, nor did I partake in the doxxing. I was literally asleep when that stuff went down.
Q: What’s the matter with you and Arty? What’s with the messages Grim leaked about you being supposedly transphobic?
I’m not going to pull a Warfan here; turn on a dime, come back and say “oh, um, actually I changed my mind on this” and try to wiggle my way around this. The frank and honest tale is that I don’t like Arty as a person because they are annoying to have in any conversation since they insert (trans)gender politics into everything, which is super taxing and unnecessary.
Does that mean I hate trans folk? Obviously not. The Forum post Grim posted? Yes, that was me being heated and frankly I had crossed a line. That’s fine. I’m only human. Not sorry though.
The Discord stuff from Councilcord? That’s pretty much just carefully cropped snippets of conversation which (it seems) Management is using to try and prove their point about me. Obviously I was holding a conversation with others there, and the actual context of it all is lost because Management is unwilling to show the full context and reality of what was discussed.
Said reality is that the conversation (regarding Arty) was us discussing that gender politics have no place in online discussions, and that vehemently insisting on being gendered correctly in a pre-dominantly male space (CM as much as any other online space, let’s be 100% honest here) is silly and dumb. I, myself, have been misgendered in your thread here repeatedly, being called a ‘she’ purely because I play a femstatic. In-game, ironically, I am usually misgendered and called a Sir. I don’t give a shit and I don’t get worked up about it.
Does that mean I have the same perspective as a transgender? No, obviously not. Me being indifferent about being misgendered isnt the same as when a trans person gets misgendered, but given the transgender friends I have, I sure know that those types of trans folk can exist, and I have exactly zero issues with em. I know their gender, but when you’re typing in chat, or worse yet, playing games, you default to male pronouns all the time. It just happens. It’s not malicious, it’s a habit, and my friends realise that.
tl:dr no I’m not transphobic. That entire convo was about us agreeing that Beck is a bottomless shitstirrer and that Arty should stop inserting gender identity into conversations they have absolute no place in. That’s literally all it was, and I have no clue why Staff are adding so much more sauce to this than there actually is lol.
Q: Why a direct cban? Why wasn’t there any sort of announcement about a CO Councillor being cbanned?
No idea. There’s theories - the usual type of ‘X Manager has it out for me and wanted me gone’ - but I won’t entertain that in this. It seems silly to me not to let at least the CO WL know one of their Councillors just got snapped into oblivion.
Whether this is carelessness and unprofessional, or people trying to hide things under the rug, is up to you people to decide for yourselves.
Q: Have you had any chance to talk with Management about this cban after?
I have not gone out of my way to DM any of them, so I wouldn’t know. I went and DMed Forest BEFORE my cban because Grim had gone and compared me to Frozen’s doxxers, which is hilariously outrageous to say considering all I did was publicly claim he was a terrible host and mocking of his own community. I went and wrote an entire, properly written out appeal, and remained respectful to Forest as I always have been.
Forest never replied, ghosting me and my appeal. Hours later, I was cbanned without warn. To my knowledge, Grim has not been punished or reprimanded in any way for slandering me in public. Shame, but oh well.
In closing, I am typing this up as a final way to clarify things to you all. I’m not planning on returning, the same way I decided not to return to Staff 2 years ago when I realised this very same rot from within Management.
I want to end this on a happy note, if I can, so I just wanted to say thank you to my fellow CO Councillors who were a great pleasure to work with. We didn’t always see eye to eye on every issue and every change or applicant, but it was a professional and enjoyable experience, and I still feel we had one of the most active and competent Whitelist Councils of the current day with us. Particular shoutout to Karl aka Superreallycoolguy who is a longterm friend and seriously vouched for me when it came to actually getting people to vote me into Council. Thanks, Karl. Seriously, I won’t forget all you’ve done for and with me.
There’s a lot of other people I could be thanking - it’s been YEARS - but this isn’t a cryosleep post and I don’t want it to be one anyway.
Feel free to friend me on Discord (lilpenpusher) if any of you wanna chat properly, I’m chill. I’m currently looking to setup an ‘Artcord’ for people to post and discuss CM-related artwork, be it characters or otherwise. I’m hoping for it to be a place where CM’s artists can have a bit more of a safe space to grow and prosper, not just that single chatroom in the maincord. I really feel the artistic avenue of CM has been underrated, and as my recent expenditure signals, I’d love to give proper attention to artists.
If you’d like an invite to that server, by all means, hit me up on Discord. Shameless plug is very real.
Anyways, I’ve finally become free. I’m going to see you people on the Creek.
