#luxoractivity

Dear Luxor,

I am writing to the current members of Luxor and to those who might be considering joining. I'm writing this because I have things to say, and I've been quiet for far too long. While the admins may write me off as a member burned, I hope at least one person can take me at face value, because I am here to tell my story.

I joined Luxor on May 17, 2020. However, it was not an easy process. The face claim I wanted to use was rejected as being "too old," despite that face claim having copious amounts of resources from when he was younger. At the time of my application, the rules regarding face claims were that they should have played a high school character before, which my desired face claim did. I had to fight to use the face for my character that I wanted to, and while I was successful, I was often scared to use resources that were in the time frame deemed acceptable by the admins, but that I was afraid they'd see as too "old". And this is a fear that I've kept until my last day as a member of this rp. I am still afraid that I may be issued warnings or other forms of cease and desists for using a resource for my character.

Despite the initial trouble, Luxor seemed like a great place. So many of the members I met when I joined were wonderful and welcoming except, funny enough, the admin team. The only thing I received from them upon joining was a link to the Luxor Discord server. They never introduced themselves, and only one of the admins included a very basic "welcome!" message upon my joining the server. 

So while I was plotting with and getting to know the members, the admin team gave the air of being aloof and untouchable. Trying to reach out and plot with them, would result in a message or two every two weeks. And then nothing would ever come from it. I'd start threads and reply to threads with the admins, and they'd end within 4-5 replies if they ever got a reply at all. The rules of the role-play prohibit "bubble rp," but there's no one in more of a bubble than the admins.

Before this is written off as an unfounded claim, despite trying to plot with Admin Mimi for months, my first ever dash interaction with her was on October 21, 2020. That was more than five months after I joined the rp. So, for anyone considering joining and wondering about plotting with the admins, I'd suggest another rp, as these admins don't plot much outside their clique.

And yes, I called it a clique, because that's exactly what it is. Some people are in the "inner circle" and included in a private discord server with the admins, and surprise, those select people and the admins rarely plot outside themselves for anything. A thread started outside the clique, will more than likely be abandoned after one or two replies, if you see any replies at all.

Beyond their clique and bubble, the admins have a growing history with power trips. The first was on July 25, 2020, when the admins created a firm rule about the role-play's secret aspect. We were told that we were no longer allowed to speculate amongst ourselves. Honestly, that took a lot of the fun out of it. It was fun to speculate with others, see if they guessed our own characters' secrets or not. They created a rule; however, that stated that only two characters could know a secret of another character. Depending upon the secret, that is potentially impossible to maintain. But it limits characters from having ties to others in their past when the secret may have originated if two other characters already know the secret. The rule came out of nowhere and seemed very arbitrary. It was an unnecessary bid for power.

Then on October 7, 2020, the admin team decided to temporarily shut down the role-plays Discord server, under the guise of making the rp more inclusive. They asked for member feedback and thoughts and concerns. I, as well as others that I know of, gave them a list of concerns that we had. I can't speak for their concerns, but mine went largely ignored. I had issue with one of the members that were a part of the admins' clique, and the response was rather that they seemed untouchable, as if they couldn't possibly be making me feel like the rp was an unsafe environment. This was not the first time that I brought a concern that I had about this member to the admins, and it was the not the first time that they disregarded my concerns, as the things that bothered me weren't "against the rules."

Most recently, the admins created a new rule on December 15, 2020 about starters. The rule is unwieldy and dictates who a character can and cannot interact with. By forcing members to reply to three threads per character in order to do a single starter call, they remove the ability for some to role-play closed starters from more than just the few people they reach out to. I did bring this concern to the admins, and they all but wrote me off. Personally, I am a full-time student with a part-time job. I can barely maintain four threads per character. This new rule made it impossible for me to do a starter call in any capacity, severely limiting my ability to role-play as I have been doing for months now.

However, my issues aren't just from arbitrary and overly controlling rules. The admins have also accused me, personally, of things that I won't go into as they concern other people as well as my self. I received a warning for something they took on hearsay. It was reported to them by someone that had a falling out with myself, and the action itself supposedly occurred during a voice chat. Now, there is no way to prove a conversation over voice chat without a recording, but that's not the point. The point is that I was given a warning without the admins reaching out for my side of the story. They took the other person's word as fact, and didn't consider to hear both sides before issuing warnings. I wasn't the only to receive this treatment either, but that's not my story to tell.

On December 28, 2020, the admins began what is essentially a witch hunt. They received what they perceived as hate. In my opinion, what they received was simply a statement of an opinion of their members. However, they began this witch hunt, asking for members to accuse other members of sending these messages. This, like most witch hunts, ended with the accusation of someone innocent. This innocent is a dear friend of mine, and it hurt to see them hung out like a witch for the world to see with little to no proof. Seeing this, I know it's completely my time to leave. I cannot stay in a place that breeds hostility and threatens private conversations and feelings to be become public spectacle. 

So now we're here. This is my official withdrawal from Luxor Academy. To potential new members, I hope at least some of my words prepare you for what kind of place this is. This all said, I want to be clear that it is not the whole admin team that are powerhungry. It is the two main admins, Nora and Mimi. I have had very little good experiences with them to share. To Yo, thank you for trying, and I appreciate you as the only sane admin on this rp. To my friends, I still consider you my friends. If you ever want to talk or even do a one on one role-play over Discord, you know where to reach me. Just because I'm dissatisfied with Luxor's management, does not mean I think less of my friends.

Further, upon completion of this letter, it has come to my attention that a member of this rp, someone I thought was my friend, or at least friendly, shared my personal medical information with the admins, without my knowledge or consent. This speculated information was taken as a screenshot and sent to multiple other members, something that caused me to have a panic attack. Having my information circulated like this is the very last straw. Luxor is an unsafe role-play environment, and anyone thinking to join, please think very carefully.

Sincerely,

Hello everyone, we wanted to take a moment to update the members on a few things and keep you all in the light.

A MESSAGE FROM THE ADMINS

We wanted to address some points with nothing but honesty.

Point #1: Inclusiveness

The first thing we would like to address is the issue with admins and their inclusiveness. In the months leading up to the holidays, the admins have not interacted with as many people as they should have been. When we acknowledge that we haven’t had threads with as many people as we should, it isn’t for a lack of trying. Every one of the admins wants to participate like any other member and we do try to have threads with as many people as we can but with balancing our personal schedules, maintaining the main (which we are still never perfect with), answering questions, organizing the grand plot, and managing the rest of the behind the scenes for the RP, sometimes we do struggle to have as many threads as we would like and as many threads as we expect our members to have with one another.

When we started this RP, each one of the admins had more free time to spare on RP in general. Obviously, a lot occurs and changes in your personal lives over the course of a year and a half, and despite the fact that we do have more things to balance on top of running the RP, we still want to see the grand plot through, we still want to run this group for the members that have been developing their characters here for so long and while the number of threads we are able to maintain is affected, many of the other responsibilities we have are also affected. This includes being able to come online regularly. If we come online with the intention of doing replies, if there are questions or concerns that have been brought to our attention, if they are matters we can handle alone, we are usually prioritizing those over doing our replies. Although it may not always show on the dash, we do want to have threads with everyone, and every time we plot with people OOC, we have every intention of seeing that plot through on the dash.

We don’t want to use our busyness as an excuse to not engage with everyone, but we do want to be transparent in saying that sometimes, us trying our best to maintain everything: not neglect our personal lives and have threads with everyone, is a lot, and it doesn’t always allow us to have threads with everyone that we would like to. We claim full responsibility for not reaching out to our members and plotting with them as much as we should have, and we take responsibility for not having threads with as many people as we should, and if the admins have made you feel excluded IC or OOC, we are truly sorry for that and it is never our intention. With that being said, we will be making a conscious effort to reach out more to our members for plotting purposes and threading purposes as well. Please understand that if we can’t be on to reply regularly or if we can’t get our plots on the dash quickly, etc. that we are trying our best.

Point #2: Our Top Priority

We have put so much work into the RP and we want to keep running it for as long as we can. A great deal of time, thought and effort goes into the overall plot of the RP. We sit down as a group and plan out the progression of the story months before you guys see any of it, to make sure it all makes sense and goes smoothly. Everything that happens during a plot drop — be it big or small — is deliberate and serves a purpose that a lot of thought goes into. This includes the secret reveals along with everything else. There’s a lot of care behind the scenes to make the plot as interesting and interactive as we can make it. For a year and a half, the admins have scheduled time to be online all together to work on these things. We put so much care into it, and because of the effort and time that we actively put into it, because it is challenging and even stressful at times, even just to keep it up and running on a base level, we would never intentionally exclude anyone from this group, whether IC or OOC. We care so much about the health of this RP because we want it to last.

We would never intentionally upset any of our members. When resolving OOC matters, our number one concern is resolving whatever has arisen for the betterment of the RP. The admins are a team of three separate people. That allows us to communicate from three different perspectives and consider multiple angles before making a decision. When dealing with members or situations where someone has broken the rules, our number one priority is to resolve whatever has occurred. As we have mentioned in a previous post, of course, we are people with feelings and sometimes we are frustrated and stressed as we are sure many of you have been frustrated and stressed with RP matters before. But we want to make it clear that any negative feelings we may have never take priority over the health of the RP. We set those feelings aside when speaking with you and when resolving issues. Simply put, we care more about the wellbeing of this RP than whatever negative feelings arise in the process of running it because we put so much work into it. We want it to last, and above just generally sticking around the main to answer questions, accept apps and update the pages, we have to approach everything in a solution oriented way.

Point #3: Warnings and Strikes

The third thing we would like to address is our method of issuing warnings or strikes. When it is clear to us that one of our members has blatantly broken a rule, we issue a warning or strike right away, depending on how serious the rule break is. Otherwise, we usually open a door for discussions when we happen to give out warnings or strikes to hear out the other side. If there doesn’t seem to be a reason why the other side acted the way they did, then we issue the warning or strike as we see fit. We have reached out to multiple members in the same manner when an OOC problem occurs and we always have discussions with them about the event that occurred. It is always our mission to handle things delicately with care to ensure that things don’t blow out of proportion when issues arise.

It is always very discouraging to see the very thing you have put your heart in receiving such a treatment. We do firmly believe, as stated multiple times by the admins, that if someone is unhappy with how we handle things to the point of sending us rude anons, being unhappy in the group, or starting OOC drama as a result, then we prefer for these members to leave our group. We believe that this is beneficial for both the member as well as the RP as a whole. RPing is meant to be a fun activity, if it becomes something that has a negative effect on an individual, then the best course of action is to leave the group instead of remaining unhappy. We try our best to make sure that our members are heard, but if the issue is with the plot or with how the admins choose to run the RP, then maybe it’s not a good match.

OUR NEXT STEPS

After days of contemplating what our next step should be with the RP, the admins believe that moving the RP to Discord and having it be a closed RP is the best choice for us. If you are interested in remaining in the RP, please send us a message BY MONDAY to let us know so we can include you in our future plans. We will be explaining the process of how Discord RP works to our members to help with the smooth transition. If there are any concerns regarding this, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the admins.

We will be following up again after the weekend once we have a clear timeline of when things get back into motion again. We thank our members who have stuck around and we hope things can get back to normal soon. We also want to thank all of you for your patience. We greatly appreciate it.

NOTE: We are aware that some of our members don’t like the way live events are conducted, but we wanted to say that Discord RPing is not the same format as live events. In Discord RPing, each member will have their own category where they can have regular threads, much like how it’s done on a tumblr dash. The format of this can be seen below:

This is a letter for anyone in Luxor and anyone thinking of joining. I’m sure there will be some sort of letter from the Admins saying this isn’t true and I am just a disgruntled member. But, I am a disgruntled member and the Admins are why I am disgruntled. I joined Luxor June 1st of 2020 and it was an amazing experience at first but I soon realized there were many problems. 

The first problem with Luxor is one they have suffered from before and supposedly “fixed” which in reality they hadn’t. This RP suffers from cliques and it stems from the Admins. The Admins generally “pick” who they enjoy and only seem to talk to those specific people and even create separate chats with those people. I have tried to rp with the admins and none of them have seemed to care enough to continue threads or interact with members unless it’s those they like the best of all of the members. 

I’ll be the first to admit the first time I cried and had a panic attack about this RP was my own fault. I didn’t realize I would be triggered and when it came up the Admin I contacted was helpful even though I was drunk at the time. This was June 2nd.

In the first weeks, June 14th, I was at Luxor the Admins gave me a “warning” because another person in the Rp complained about me to the Admins and they took that person’s word over my own. In fact the Admins didn’t even ask for my opinion on the matter or for my side of the story. The following of this paragraph will be explaining what happened in my own words. This problem started without my knowing and I was not a part of the RPG. People that I knew who were a part of Luxor were talking about a specific person because they didn’t understand a character. The person who had been there the longest had a falling out with myself and a few others and decided to blame us for their own words and judgment. This was the moment I knew something was wrong with this RP and I had a panic attack because of all of this. This was June 12th.

The next few weeks would be filled with problems of trying to RP with specific people and realizing only so many of this RP actually were okay with interacting with newbies. I thought this would go away in time but it did not. Still I held out because the people I had met were wonderful and brilliant people and despite the RP’s problems I like the friends I had made along the way. I did notice early on that some people didn’t have to follow the rules to the precise letter and others did. I summed this up to those people being new and the others weren’t. The Admins especially do not want to interact with new people and expect those new people to follow their rules while the Admins themselves do not have to follow the rules. 

A few months later, October 2nd, the Admins would try to solve problems by asking for their members' concerns. I gave mine and the Admins generally told me no and dismissed my concerns, and comments. One of these problems is the fact that their own banner is one of their FCs. If that doesn’t say this is the main character of an RP I’m not sure what does. Customarily, I am used to no FCs being used on any banner, header, or icon. Luxor does not follow this unspoken rule.

On December 28th a discord event happened. The Admins dropped one secret and that frustrated some people. Because of this Anons were sent to the main and the admins got upset. Specifically Nora. The last time secrets were released, 10 secrets were released and I like others expected this secret drop to be the same amount. I am not going to apologize for any of the messages, in frustration people do dumb things and it is something people have to deal with. Because of these messages Luxor was completely shut down and the Admins expected those who had sent the anons to come forward. Thus was the start of a witch hunt. 

It took two days for the Admins to “find someone” and blame them for the messages. To this person I owe you the biggest apology. You were given the harshest punishment for being upset and I know that never feels good. I also owe someone else an apology, to you my friend I am so sorry. I never want you to feel the way I made you feel, you have amazing characters and you are someone I trust and I broke that. I hope someday you can trust me again, you and the person who was blamed are the victims here and I am so sorry. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.

Since June 1st I have had multiple panic attacks and moments when I have been in tears frustrated over Luxor’s Admins. The people I have met in Luxor have been amazing most of the time but those who ended up close to the Admins and icing the rest of the RP have been the reason why I am writing this letter. To those who did not see this coming and I consider my friends I am sorry this seems sudden but my health is more important than the people who’ve given me multiple panic attacks. For my friends always feel you can reach out to me on Discord, I do still want to be your friend and wish you the best. 

Sincerely,