#crownshqs

On Christmas night (12/25/2020) an anonymous submitted a complaint to pocmuzings regarding my roleplay, crownshqs. I am one of three admins here at Crowns, and I would first like to express how deeply upset we were by the accusations cited; we in no way would ever wish to make members feel unappreciated or unsafe in our group, where our foremost concern is to cultivate appreciation for other members, and foster an atmosphere of inclusion and acceptance. In this anonymous complaint, VIEW HERE, we were accused of promoting and allowing “blatant” racism, homophobia, and toxicity in our group. In response to these claims, we provided our current members with a completely anonymous climate survey, where we encouraged members to cite any personal experiences that have, in the past, made them feel uncomfortable, marginalized, or uneasy in their Crowns experience. You may read the FULL TRANSCRIPT of our climate survey address HERE.

We will not be linking the actual climate survey as it is currently closed and we are no longer accepting submissions. However, you will be able to see the specific questions we asked, and the topics we opened for discussions, below – as well as accompanying answers. This is the second climate survey we’ve conducted this year, and we will be continuously conducting climate surveys such as these to make certain our members, specifically those who are writers of colour or members of the LGBT, feel welcomed, appreciated, and safe from any form of discrimination. 

While we take seriously the allegations lodged against us, and will work toward making sure this space is one of both inclusivity and acceptance, we do not believe most of these complaints were (1) fair (2) accurate or (3) a truthful assessment of both our admins and members; we believe the results of our climate survey attest to the inaccuracy of these statements, and provide members of the rpc such as pocmuzings, a deeper understanding of how we operate as admins at Crowns. We’ve done our utmost to be transparent in the statistical information provided below, but welcome further questions should you have any. 

STATISIC-WISE.

We closed the survey on 12/29, 72 hours after posting it. The findings of the survey are provided below.

69.6% of our members identify as LGBT+; 21.7% do not; 8.7% prefer not to say.

0% of our members have experienced homophobia in Crowns, whether IC or OOC. 

87% of members feel welcomed at Crowns; 3 others described it took longer for them to become acclimatized to Crowns. No one answered that they did not feel welcomed.

91.3% of our members feel welcomed by Admins; one individual who did not answer "yes" cited that they've been left on read by admins, a shortcoming we seek to improve. The other individual who did not answer "yes" wrote a short-answer confirming they'd felt welcomed by admins instead.

STATISTIC BY IMAGES:

CHANGES WITHIN THE ROLEPLAY.

We have replaced the Indian and Pakistani faceclaims previously used for Persian characters; the roles in question now have Iranian actors as their faceclaims. A third character was written with familial connections to the Delhi Sultanate, so that particular faceclaim has not been changed, but we have made the connection more explicit in the role’s blurb. During volume two, we added Persia as a playable court and initially prevented applicants from using non-Iranian faceclaims for the core family roles. You can see some of the suggestions we made here. However, the roles received little interest, and we received requests to use non-Iranian faceclaims (which we attempted to discuss, here). Given our members’ willingness to incorporate faceclaims’ ethnicities—specifically Riz Ahmed’s Pakistani background—into the established Safavid narrative after we reopened for volume 3, we believed that allowing these particular faceclaims was a responsible decision. We realize now that it was not; we have learned that the alternate history and faceclaim choices constituted misrepresentation and caused offense. In addition to changing these faceclaims and requiring Middle Eastern faceclaims going forward for Persian roles, we also intended to add several playable characters from Delhi. This step is meant to acknowledge the interest in Indian history and faceclaims, and it will also better incorporate non-Western histories into Crowns.

We’ve changed “suggested” poc roles to mandatory poc roles, and will continuously improve non-western representation in Crowns by promoting, advertising, and encouraging writers to fill these roles. We have also formalized a preexisting request that applicants incorporate their faceclaims’ ethnicities in the background of their character, to the most reasonable extent possible.  For example, Jewish faceclaims should have Jewish ancestry; Indian faceclaims should be of Indian ancestry. This is an issue we didn’t adequately enforce in the past; however, we hope to be more cognizant of our oversights, such as this, in the future.

We have also implemented a “buddy system” last summer to improve relations between members in Crowns. In our roleplay, new members have always been assigned an existing member to introduce them to the roleplay. In volume two, we debuted the buddy system as a method of connecting old members who felt isolated or uninspired with other members, for both ic and ooc interactions. We continue to encourage our members to take advantage of these programs, and we’re extremely grateful to those who have volunteered to be buddies. As of today, we are also releasing a challenge as part of our anti-bubble roleplaying initiative that will randomly pair members who might not initially interact, providing them with locations and themes to foster collaboration and hopefully result in a thread between the two characters. Bubble-roleplaying has been a complaint in the roleplay that admins take seriously; we hope our efforts to resolve these issues will reflect our earnestness in making Crowns a collaborative and welcoming space. 

We will continue to address issues that were made known to us via this anonymous complaint, and going forward, will be more stringent on ourselves as admins to pinpoint, resolve, and apologise for any sources of toxicity in our group.

& FOR THE RPC, SPECIFICALLY.

We want to end by saying we assume full culpability in any oversights regarding our management of Crowns. With over 30 members, this has undoubtedly been a huge undertaking, and as a result most of our free time reserved for roleplaying is taken up by adminning – as many admins will sympathise, we feel great respect and love for our members, and would never wish for our shortcomings to bring harm or unease to them. While our issue is not with pocmuzings directly, we would like to point out that the accusations lodged against us in our admittedly brief correspondence were unsubstantiated, anecdotal and at times, point blank, rude. Comb through any one of our pages, and you’ll see the utter love and dedication we’ve poured into every detail. We are hugely appreciative of our members and characters’ unique identities and orientations, and we hope our keen attention to detail regarding our climate survey proves as much. 

With each iterations of Crowns, we learn from our members, and we will continue to do so, taking into account what works for a group of this size and what doesn’t. Communication remains key in accommodating so many writers at once, and we’re sorry that the anons who have come forward have felt like they couldn’t talk to us directly about things that have bothered them under our administration. However, we would prefer that complaints such as these were, in the future, brought directly to us: anonymity allows unreserved inveighing, some of it deeply hurtful and antagonistic against us as admins. In the end, we are college students, doing our best to make a fun lil’ Medieval writing group. I am not appreciative of the anons who have used their cloak of anonymity to cast aspersions to my fellow Admin N. Hurling racist accusations against someone who is, themselves, an underrepresented woman of colour – is never okay. 

In the end, however, we understand that most of the rpc doesn’t understand how our group operates, or what it’s like to be a member. It took one post to cut us down. We urge the rpc to do their research. Claims such as these are harmful to members, who evidently don’t see our group the same way as this anonymous complaint did. They’re harmful to our writers, to our new and preexisting members, and to us as admins. We can whole-heartedly boast of a thriving group of incredible people; if he person who submitted these complaints, and the person who published them without consulting with us or our roleplay took a second to understand the group, the issue we currently are facing would not be as magnified as it is: instead, it took one click of a button to make us as admins, and our members, feel insecure over the future of Crowns –– a place we have relied on for over a year to help us fathom the current situation of the world. Historical fiction is not for everyone, we know this. There are parts of our history of civilisation that have left deeply hurtful, harmful, and inexcusable scars of mistreatment and abuse on various cultures. Our members are history-lovers; we are not here to absolve or bear the brunt of every misdeed history has to offer. We’ve tried to cultivate an alternative history space that allows our members to explore the many parts of the past they care about without reproducing harmful aspects. We are sensitive to the issues that have taken place in history and that extend to today, so we hope you can understand that Crowns has meant, in its several year run, so much to those involved –– including myself. 

❞ HI LOVELY !! This roleplay looks amazing, so thank you for the rec !! I think I’m more of the modern day ( or 80s and 90s at the limit ) roleplay kind of girl, though ?? So I’m going to pass – but if you’re into historical rps, definitely check out @crownshqs !! Xoxo