summertime

1. Will and Ollie worked on their apps just like everyone else did. Drea holds no dislike or hatred towards them, and all of us still keep in contact and chat rather often. We were good friends in DA1, good friends in DA2, and it continued through DA3 and even now. But even so, no opinions, whether good or bad, make a difference when it comes to roster decisions.

2. We never made fun or mocked anyone for being a 'shitty roleplayer' or for being annoying. I mean, everyone vents about other people to their friends when they're annoyed with something another person has done. That's natural. But we've never mocked anyone for being a shitty roleplayer. Everyone has room to grow and improve. If someone's having fun doing what they're doing, we're not going to slam them for it. We'll do our thing, and they can do theirs!

3. People get blacklisted for serious offenses - harassment of any variety, serious metagaming, that sort of thing. Currently, there are six people on our blacklist. I'm not going to name names or drag other people through the mud, but the people who have been placed on there have been put there for either sexual harassment of other people in the community, or repeated harassment of Doubt players / harrassment of other people in general while in our game. We don't blacklist people for nothing, and we only put them on there if they've done something that is related to us or our game - otherwise, we're more than willing to try and communicate and talk thing out to work with whoever is involved to fix any potential problems.

4. Drea wasn't involved with DA3 roster choices at all whatsoever. That was only me, and only Maru. Vio, Mimi's mun, did not get in because Maru and I felt that her character didn't have strengths that were as solid as others that we selected. Vio is not and was not on our blacklist. The only reason she didn't get in is because we selected other characters for our rosters that appealed to us more than Nabiki did. Unfortunately, that's something that happens a lot with anything that has an application - jobs, groups, games, whatever. We had over 200 applications, and had to narrow them down to a total of approximately 50. That's less than 25% of the applicants. There are just going to be people that we reject for literally no reason other than the fact that other characters appealed to us more when we were selecting rosters. It doesn't mean their characters are bad. It doesn't mean we're harboring some sort of hate or grudge against them. It just means that we preferred one character to another. I'm sorry that's the case. If we could have full games of people all the time, so that everyone could be involved, that would be amazing. But with only one or two people GMing at a time, it's not possible.

5. Yes, there are. Like I sai, people are blacklisted for serious offenses. The whitelist is a list of our current and previous GMs - so it has myself, Drea, CC, Nick, and Dazy on it. Our status on the whitelist means very little when it comes to applications. Despite being on there, we still have to fill out complete applications, just as everyone else does. If we are granted an automatic acceptance, it is done so outside of the total amount of applications accepted, to ensure that we still accept 50 people into our games that are not GMs. The greylist is a list of people we've had difficulty with at some point or another, related only to the game itself - so it includes people who have had issues with metagaming, with talking or interacting with other players OOC, with problematic / inappropriate conduct IC and / or OOC, major activity issues, etc. There are more people on the greylist than the whitelist and blacklist combined, but it does not prevent anyone from getting in. Instead, the greylist functions as a reminder for us to talk to those people listed about any problems we've had in previous games with them, in order to resolve any issues going forward into new games. There are people on our greylist who are in current games, have been in past games, and will be in future games. It doesn't stop any chances of them getting in.

6. Yeah, a lot of people are on the greylist. I think... About 30? Most of them are on there for activity issues, which really isn't a big deal. If they get into a game, then we contact them separately to say, "Hey, this was an issue in this game. Let's work on something to prevent that - either let us know if you're going to disappear for a while, or we can figure something out together to fix any potential issues." We've done that with several people in past and current games. It's really not a big deal. The other majority of people on the greylist are for issues with the muns, where they have interacted with others badly IC / OOC, to the point where a GM had to help mediate, or if it involved a GM. Again, it's still not something that would affect their chances of getting in, and instead is there for us to talk to them about if they get into another game. The greylist is comprised mainly of previous / current players.

7. Drea has never said that she hated Jason nor Vio. During DA2, she worked with them multiple times through the game, and I don't remember her ever blatantly saying she hated them. There have been times when she was annoyed with something that one or the other had done, but it was outside of the game, and didn't affect them or their gameplay at all. Jason was in DA3, and was in the same game as Drea for a short period, before we changed rosters. Neither of them had any issues with one another that were brought up with me. We moved Jason to Alpha because another person wanted to switch rosters, and we thought Jason would enjoy being with some of his other friends in the other game.

8. Dazy has covered this in her long post already, and you can read that. You can also read the logs Drea has posted into a Google Doc, or as screenshots. When Drea, Minty, and I realized that Camp Despair Valley's rules were essentially lifted from Doubt Academy's, we contacted them. Drea spoke with Kale, and I studied our rules compared to theirs. We requested that if they were going to use the same rules, they at least give us credit. As far as I know, the conversation between Drea and Kale was polite and professional - never once going into something that would be bullying, for either of them. I'm very sorry that we inadvertently made them have a panic attack, though; no one deserves to have to go through anxiety attacks or panic attacks as a result of something that was a misunderstanding and miscommunication. Further, the screenshots where I tweeted (on Jaejin's account) back to Lynnette (Yoon-Ji's mun) were outside of the conversation with Kale. The full explanation had not yet been given to either Lynnette (or Ollie) at that point, and it appeared as if we were just mad that there was another group out there. That wasn't the case at all; I was upset that CDV had used our same ruleset and everything without prior notice and / or credit. After speaking with Kale, and also with Ollie, the problem was resolved peacefully within that same day. Kale and I have spoken on occasion since then, and we're still on good terms - we've never wished each other ill will or harm whatsoever.

9. Yes. This is true, and we've never hidden this fact. I was the only person automatically accepted into DA2, because I created Doubt Academy, and because I hadn't had a chance to roleplay in a group yet. Despite that, I still wrote a full application with prompts and everything. In DA3, we told people that there would be five total auto-accepts: myself, Maru, Drea, Mars, and Hunter - our two GMs, the previous GM, and our two mod assistants. For DA4, they made it very clear that there were four auto-accepts: myself, CC, Nick, and Dazy - the two previous GMs, and the two current GMs. They selected mod assistants after rosters were announced. CC and I both filled out complete applications. We've never hidden this fact from anyone, and we've never lowered our acceptance numbers as a result of it.

10. I GMed half of DA2; the other half was Minty. When I started modding DA2B, I immediately made myself available to the members of DA Black, and tried to do my best to be as approachable as possible. I feel like I really got to know a lot of people in that group, and I feel like they welcomed me with open arms. I am very thankful to them for being so supportive and helpful towards me as I started GMing again, and I would hope that I was the same for them. I can't speak for what they actually thought of me, but I can say that there were multiple times I worked with other players to resolve issues and communicate, so I don't know where the whole "Kat wouldn't handle conflict" thing came from. In DA3, we had mod assistants for that very reason though, so that we could help more people as need be, and we could delegate some of the responsibility between our group. Even so, I did my best to at least speak with or be involved with any issue, so that we could resolve it together. There was a time at the end of DA3 when I had to step back on my own, during which Dazy and Nick helped quite a bit in my place, as did other players. Otherwise, I've always taken my role as a GM very seriously and have done my best to assist whenever possible.

11. I wouldn't say that she made her whole game suffer. Minty had some personal issues, which had nothing to do with the game itself. She was under a lot of stress, which was apparent, which is what led me to asking her to step down. While she was GMing, DA2 Black still ran wonderfully, on schedule, with everything going according to her plans. Nothing was falling apart, nothing was broken. Minty was - and is - a good GM, and she was doing her best despite all her stress. We decided it was better to ask her to step down so that she could try to relax, resolve any of her personal issues, and try to have fun roleplaying instead. There have been multiple miscommunications between Minty, Drea, and myself, which is pretty obvious - but we've never held ill will towards her for her work during DA2. She did nothing but work hard, and we appreciate everything she has ever done for the group.

12. We didn't 'hunt them down.' When we got the survey results, they were each assigned a random number, so we could see that an answer on question A by #1234 was the same #1234 on question B. In this way, we could connect most of the answers together to help us understand whenever a person gave us feedback from one answer to the next. In many cases, people readily told us their identity, their character, or made it obvious about who they were. We only actively tried to figure out the identities of people when they gave us negative feedback, but did not explain anything behind it - such as saying something like, "I had a bad time," but not telling us what made it bad. We wanted to improve things, so we wanted to use the surveys to understand what was bad, what needed to be fixed, and how to resolve any issues still standing.

13. I promised four people spots: Drea, Maru, Mars, and Hunter. I made that very clear going into the applications for DA3. I didn't promise anything to anyone else; all other people had to apply, just as everyone else did. We judged applications based on the applications alone. Unfortunately, going into a game, you can't tell immediately how active or inactive a person will be - it depends on so many outside circumstances, and we can't blame anyone for that. We can only talk to them about it moving forward. I'm sorry that they felt that they were denied a space when there were inactive players, but we didn't judge based on activity - we judged based on their applications. That's it.

14. There were over 200 applications. I'm one person. It took me seven days of reading six to eight hours a day just to get through the applications. I was the only one doing any kind of critiques / explanations when I tried to do them early on, but I couldn't handle the number of requests that came in on top of my GM responsibilities. I'm sorry that I couldn't do that. I wish I could have spoken to everyone individually and given them info about their app and why we did or did not choose them. But I'm a single person - I couldn't do it all. There's no excuse. All I could say, and still stand by, is the fact that in an application-based anything, it will always come down to a comparison between applications, and a GM will have to pick one over the other. It doesn't make one better or worse than the other; it just means that one appealed to that GM more. It might have been different if someone else had been making the decisions for rosters.

15. Again, only six people are even on the blacklist. If we ever 'talked shit' about anyone, it was never done to put them immediately on the blacklist or anything like that. I won't deny that I've done my fair share of gossip - every single person has, there's no getting around that. But that alone doesn't make someone (or a group of friends) awful as a result. Neither Drea nor Minty are awful for that, either. It happens. People talk about other people when they're with friends and feel like they're in a safe space. And at that point, with Drea and Minty, I felt like I was in a safe space with friends, so I won't deny that I've talked shit or gossiped or vented about other people that I know.

16. That's never happened even once. I don't even know where you're getting this? Like, the two disabled characters in DA2 were Jun in DA White, and Etsuko in DA Black. And I know Drea never said anything of the sort about Jun or Etsuko, and I'm fairly certain everyone in the game had an agreement not to make any sort of comments or jokes about pushing Etsuko down stairs, even as a potential murder plan. We never jooked about that, or even considered doing it.

17. Minty wasn't 'all over' DA White. She worked hard and did what she needed to as a GM. She also hung out with her friends and had fun with them during her downtime, many of which were in DA White. That doesn't mean anything - she was having fun and doing her best as both a player and a GM. There is nothing she is at fault for, regarding that.

18. No one in DA2 Black ever commented once about how Minty was 'treating them like crap.' Rather, when I stepped in, each of them immediately tried contacting Minty and myself to wish her well, to offer help or support, and to reach out and let her know that they still cared. None of them hated her. None of them felt as if she was treating them like crap. And if they did, they never told anyone. But Minty was well-liked, and well-respected, and that did not change when I began to GM instead.

19. Drama will affect a lot of people in a lot of ways. I tried my best to not let it affect me, but it did, I won't lie. But regardless of how stressed I may have been, or how stressed Drea or Minty were in DA2, we all did exactly what we needed to do for the game, on schedule, as we needed to do it. And if we couldn't do it, we spoke to our players and communicated with them. Never once have we tried to treat anyone differently or badly because of our own stress. And if we have, then I sincerely apologize for that - stress and drama can do a lot to a person. Anyone knows that. And while you can't always excuse a person's actions just because they were stressed, you should still recognize that their stress does not define them. As GMs, we still did our jobs, and we tried to do our best. Drea, Minty, and I have always tried to uphold that.

Phew, that's long.