* ❛ ᴄᴀʀᴏʟɪɴᴀ // ᴀᴘ

Was my initial message to Cade after the other night “grow the fuck up”? Yes, I will admit that. It was a knee-jerk anger moment. I have a temper. You can ask the men from last night’s mosh pit that you don’t push me. But then I took the time to message her...

"Yeah, you know what, I have one problematic ship. I don’t condone it. And I write it, wrote it actually. With one partner for multiple years. I don’t promo my Bella blog, I write in a very closed circle. You went out of your way to dredge that up, after months. Not that it’s any of your business: but I haven’t been writing that ship, that blog, or any blogs, because I’ve been dealing with my own depression. Wait, I’m an ableist, right, so how could I possibly have depression? I haven’t been on Tumblr in months. I lost my grandfather, I tried to kill myself immediately after. Are you happy to hear that? Are you happy to know that while I was trying everything I could to help you with your discomfort with the group, literally trying my hardest to mend the situation in a way that wouldn’t require you leaving, and while I was on vacation, my grandfather was in the hospital dying? We’re not bad people, Cade. We just don’t have the same opinions as you. And I tried. I’m sorry you blame us for everything. But I haven’t bad mouthed you once. I haven’t mentioned you since you left. I would never stoop so low as to drag your name through the mud. You can have your problems with us, you can reflect how you want. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve said nasty things about us, about me. You’ve vagued about us. You blame us. That’s fine. I’m sorry things didn’t work out."

Their response? To block me, on any blog I tried to reach out to them on, post that I should “take a hint” and then say that we were all giving them anxiety. I never wanted Cade to leave the group, but things were getting out of hand. I have been role playing for longer than most of you have been alive. I have been around the block multiple times, I have been a moderator, admin, storyteller and dungeon master many times over. The sad fact is, if a player is continuously a problem and you have exhausted your avenues of corrective action, you need to let a player go. I wanted Cade to be successful. I urged them to reach out to people, but they continuously felt ignored because messages may not have been answered in a timely manner, or answered at all. 

At the time, three of us were all working full time jobs with varying hours. At least one of those people are the people Cade reached out to. I can’t tell you how many times it’s taken me a week to realize I have notifications. Cade felt that we were all talking about them behind their back, and that wasn’t true. There were no secret groups. There was one sub server created as place where a few of us could one on one do IC texts, but that was it. I had provided multiple channels in the main server to engage in active RP. It wasn’t helping. 

Cade approached me at one point asking to bring on another muse. My concern with how they were struggling to connect with muns and drive their own personal storylines and growth that the addition of another muse wouldn’t be helpful and they would only get more upset and stressed out. I told them no, for that very reason.

One repetitive issue was topics would be brought up in “the dumpster”, our ooc channel, that would grow heated. Cade became argumentative and when people attempted to have a conversation, or voice their own opinion, Cade would immediately back down, or waffled. It frustrated a lot of players. The boiling point was when I was on vacation and unable to moderate the chat actively. IIRC it was regarding the portrayal of South within RVB and things got out of hand. Cade left the server and I was furious. Frankly, I was furious at everyone. It was my first time off of work in 7 months, my grandfather was hospitalized, I had a lot on my mind. I spoke with Cade and told them they needed to decide what they wanted to do. A few days later they approached me to tell me that they wanted to remain in the verse but not on the server. The only problem was that at this time 90% of our activity was taking place on Discord. We were all becoming less and less inclined to be on Tumblr. I expressed to Cade my concern, once again, that they would be unhappy and unable to actively participate in the verse if they weren’t on the server and that I would advise them to come back on but ignore the OOC chatter.

There was a conversation regarding RT hiring animators. A byline on the application was applicants have a sense of humor, and one member made the comment “lmao i feel like that's the equivalent of putting: "tumblr need not apply"” Cade’s response was “but a lot of their fans are on tumblr?” and that’s when “the joke, cat, the joke” happened. Up until this point, we all knew Cade as Cat. None of us had been approached or made aware of Cat being Cade’s deadname. If we had, it never would have happened. Yes, Katie came to me and told me what happened. She told me what happened because she chose not to respond to Cade’s message and it wouldn’t be the first time Cade would mention to me that people were ignoring her messages. The number one rule of my verse had always been “don’t be a dick”. And if I believe someone was being mean, out of line, needed reminded, I handled it. I spoke with more than one person about such behavior while we were active. What irked me wasn’t Cade’s request, but how they chose to go about it. It was what upset Katie as well. There had been a continual issue of Cade not being able to conduct conversations with simple manners, a please a thank you or even a genuine apology. And this was just the end of it. 

When Cade left, we didn’t talk about them. But I know we were vagued about or brought up multiple times. None of us messaged her. We just went our separate ways. 

On June 14 my grandfather died. Yes, I attempted suicide when I got home from his funeral. I realized that I just needed to be the person he wanted me to be, and I got my shit together. I got a new job, one that makes me extremely happy and I notified my followers on all my blogs that my activity was going to waver. I have barely been on Tumblr. So I missed the big July 1 call out post about me and all of us from two of Cade’s blogs. They were only brought to my attention the other night when Nova flipped out on our server. None of us had seen the anon messages. And honestly, there were varying degrees of caring.

I’m not transphobic or ableist. Full stop. Now as for the incest: I write Bellatrix Black. Please, take a moment to look at the Black family tree. I previously had one partner that I wrote Bella and Sirius in a romantic relationship with. It stemmed from a shared head canon that up until Sirius left, Bella and Sirius would have been arranged to be married and also that the amount of hate they had for one another came from somewhere deeper than just being related. That’s it. I’m not going to fall on my sword for that. It was in my rules so people would be aware of it. 

The truth is, looking back, I should have known from the beginning that Cade wasn’t going to be happy in my group. Cade and their sister had intended to join as North and South together. Flash came to me asking to join as North and it was becoming apparent that Cade’s sister wasn’t going to be making North. I felt bad, but I wasn’t going to turn down another writer because of it. But it was always an underlying problem.

I’ve made my peace with this issue, I’ve moved on. I’ve hoped Cade would find their peace as well, especially since they’ve claimed to have left the fandom. I tried apologizing, because I never wanted anything like this to happen. But I don’t accept the blame that people want to place on me. I don’t blame my own actions or decisions on anyone but myself, and I don’t think anyone else should.