#darkimpala

I am one of Darkimpala's aka Marz's beta reader and I still am for at least Nomads and anything else they want me to look over.

I'm gonna come forward and be an adult say the smut thing was 100% in fact my fault and not there's, they asked me multiple times on the phone on discord if it was okay, because you know it's smut, and I was really busy with my wedding at the time, and my son, so because I thought it's fictional characters, it's okay.

When in reality it's not, I should have just told them don't do it

Please don't fucking make the same mistake as me, and they chewed me out a new one which I deserved. You guys please chew me out a new one because I shouldn't have told them it was okay.

I'm so sorry Alexis for that.

So don't send hate or anything to Marz, send it to me because they seriously thought it was okay because of me, like if I told them: "No don't do that." They would have listened to me, but I told them that it was okay.

And I feel so fucking awful right now.

But I will say I do support the other Alexis but will I stop talking to Marz? No, because it was my fault at the end of the day.

The racist stuff they sent to Alexis I had no idea...in my opinion they make stupid dumb jokes and don't fucking think, they seriously don't mean it in that way as in experience with talking to them on the phone.

But I can tell you in my experience with talking to them they're fine with me, a little strange and odd but fine, they ask about my son but never in a creepy way. She's helped me out with things when he was sick last month.

So yea that's my thoughts.

i don't want to come off as cold or rude at all, but i said a while back that i wouldn't keep talking about darkimpala because i don't want to beat a dead horse & i've long made my stance known, so i'm just going to point you to places where you can find more info.

Im so sorry for everything that happened to you. Its gross. I had a similar experience with a person like this and I just wanted to say it is NOT your fault at all. Its gross how they tried to blame you for something that they had control over. They chose to talk to a minor, and chose to do all that. I really hope you dont blame yourself or feel bad about it, because you reacted like any young person would (im a minor myself btw im not like a creep 😭). But I think youre really brave for coming out and talking about it.

hey, thanks for this ask, i really appreciate it! yeah, darkimpala is quite the manipulative person--definitely steer clear of them! i really hope that my encounter with them can help serve as a warning for other people like me, especially given that there are a fair number of minors in this fandom!!

i’m gonna go ahead and post it, since i wanted to thank you, and also to say that i am accepting asks about the situation

i'd be lying if i said that i didn't think that darkimpala's new account was an inventive way to dodge taking full accountability. there's still a lot of stuff that they never apologized for. i think that the only way they can fully take accountability is by deleting the entire nomads series up to this point and fully starting over from scratch (with a sensitivity reader), which they have not done to my knowledge. the fact that they are still promoting a series which still contains racist stereotypes is less than stellar, so i would recommend they remove what they have and modify it before republishing.

however, i do understand the appeal of wanting to start over, and if darkimpala is genuinely going to make the change in their work going forward, i have no problem with that. i hope that they actually learned from this experience and are much more mindful with the stuff they write and post going forward.

that being said, i do not plan to support darkimpala in the future. i will not read anything they write, and i will not interact with their content. this also means that i do not plan to keep publicly criticizing them, so long as nothing else happens. while i don't consider this situation typical "fandom drama" (since racism is a very real and very serious issue, so it is a lot more than fandom discourse) i do not like drama and i do not like having negative interactions with other people in the fandom. i do not like making posts about these kinds of things, even if i think they're important to talk about.

i also want to stress how much darkimpala's apology isn't mine to accept. all i can do is lean back and watch how other people respond. i would also be lying if i said i didn't still think their apology was forced and disingenuous, due to their history of doubling down and only showing contrition when legitimately forced to.

as for the AI, i am still wholly convinced that darkimpala has used it to write, and they have admitted to at least using it to edit. i don't want to spend too much time focusing on the AI because i think darkimpala's racism is a much bigger issue, but i don't think showing time-stamped notes in their notes app is proof that they've never used AI. the language is too similar to AI-generated language to not be at the very least AI-assisted. again, i know that they have recently picked up beta readers, so i do hold a little hope that they are making an effort to change this, and if they are lying about the AI, i do think that means that they at least feel a little shame over it.

again, i really do hope that darkimpala learned from this. do i hold a little doubt that they've genuinely had a change of heart? yes, but i hope that they prove me wrong. am i secretly sitting here and praying on their downfall so i have more stuff to talk about? absolutely not. i also hope this situation can serve as a wake-up call for a lot of other authors in the fandom to just... take accountability from the get-go and continually strive to improve their work. a lot of the scale of this situation could've been avoided if darkimpala didn't double down, like, five times. which makes me doubt the legitimacy of their current attempt to rebrand (at least they're using the same name, so it feels like less of an escape, i guess) but i truly, truly do hope that they are making the effort to be better.