Hi, you won't recognize my username because I've had to use an alt to send this after the mods banned me today to censor all discussion of what happened last night. I'm a regular on the sub, but mostly lurked here on Discord for a few months under the name "toffee," and had just recently joined the /r/visualnovels discord a few weeks back.

What got me banned you might ask? Asking questions about the mod's actions last night. You might have noticed the #announcement notification this morning, but if you check the channel, it's empty. The mods are trying to cover their tracks.

Last night a suicidal person commented on the sub, pleading for help. The mods chose to instantly delete and ban that person. While I understand the mod's desire to keep the situation calm, that felt a little harsh to me, so I questioned whether we couldn't have been a little more delicate. The mods said they were "handling it" and would get back to me, and then proceeded to delete all discussion of said incident. This felt a little extreme, but perhaps they knew something I didn't. They made an @everyone announcement saying that for privacy reasons, they only wanted people to PM them about it, not discuss it publicly. This seemed reasonable, so that's what I did.

Luchiris explained that it was a complex ongoing situation, but that the mods were handling it, and that Masha would get back to me to address my concerns about the severity of their response. I was a little concerned that "handling it" meant more "brushing it under the rug" than helping, but I waited to see what Masha would say.

Meanwhile, a couple of people who knew more about the situation contacted me, having seen my public comments, and filled me in on this tragic situation. From what I gather, it seems both sides were deeply hurt, but unfortunately their way of dealing with their pain is at polar opposites. One moves on by burying the issue and blocking all attempts to discuss it, and the other one first needs to talk about it and hear a goodbye before they're able to move on. Both sides are victims, but it does rather sound like one side abused their mod position to get their way, enabling them to bury the issue by banning the other from their shared communities.

A couple of hours later, Masha contacted me to address my concerns. She accused this suicidal person of harassing others because she had repeatedly asked for help. When I queried why asking for help was considered harassment, she claimed the plea for help had "personal information" and hence deserved an insta-ban. This would of course justify their actions, if not for the fact that I remembered what the message said, and that the only personal information in there was someone's first name. While I agree that's personal information and should probably be deleted, an insta-ban seemed a harsh over-reaction to me, so I began to grow a little suspicious.

Masha then tried to excuse the ban by claiming that because our community discord was unable to fix this broken person by itself, there was nothing we could do. Again, this seemed harsh to me, just because we can't fix "everything" doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. We could still offer some small comfort and talk to them rather than making a suicidal person feel even more alone than they already were by banning them.

When asked why we couldn't help even in a small way, Masha claimed she'd tried to help this person "for a long time." I would have been sympathetic and ended it there if I hadn't been told from others how Masha had blocked this suicidal person 7 months ago, ever since this woman first became suicidal, and had never spoken to her since. So I queried Masha on how she'd helped given that she'd never responded to this person in pain, and had instead banned her right from the start. Masha became outright hostile and ended the conversation.

Confused about these inconsistencies from Masha, I spoke to a couple of those people who had contacted me before, and discovered that rather than "help her" as she'd claimed, Masha had actually played a major part in making this person suicidal in the first place, 7 months ago, and had blocked and banned her ever since. No wonder Masha didn't want any discussion of this.

However I was still wary of rushing to judgement, clearly everyone involved was deeply hurt and in pain. Perhaps there was more to it? It wasn't really any of my business so I was willing to give the mods the benefit of the doubt and drop it.

Then I wake up this morning and notice I'd been banned from both the otomegames and visualnovels Discord. This screams of a guilty conscience and an attempt by the mods to cover up their actions. I now no longer believe their claims about ever attempting to help that woman, nor that anything they say is the truth.

Now that this is becoming public, I expect the mods might be forced into making a few comments about it. Just beware that they're banning dissent, so you're only going to hear from those who have bought into their version, hook, line, and sinker. However this is still a complex situation so I'm sure there's more to it than I know, but the one thing I know for certain is that they banned me for asking about it which doesn't bode well for their trustworthiness. I'd appeal this ban on reddit, but I expect they'd try to vindictively ban me on the sub too if they knew my username.