Something's rotten in the state of ZDoom

Hi everyone, this is The Toxic Avenger here, or TTA for short. If you know me in other communities, I may be named Orochi or MorbidEngel as well.

As you all may know, there's been a *lot* of hubub around Zdoom, mainly due to the absolutely atrocious handling of the situation regarding Marisa Kirisame, otherwise known as Marisa the Magician. Long story short, in March, it was brought to light that she had a previous relationship with someone under the age of 18, and she had other tendencies that she's since shed herself of, but this still does not exonerate her. However, Zdoom's staff has generally been looking to sweep this under the rug, blame the accusers, and appear to want to protect her like she's a friend. Word of this got out via Marty's video, and all hell has been breaking loose. Trust in Zdoom's staff is at an all-time low, people are leaving, and the staff is....defending itself? However, there's nuances to this that are absolutely unacceptable.

The first of many, is their co-admin, Rachael. Firstly, she brought her friend Candice into the Fun Police server, and pretty much made her a mod everywhere she could out of nowhere under the pretense that we were to trust her at face value. One person did not, and she tried to use this as leverage to rope half of the Fun Police server into a "high level sit-down" where most of it was Rachael, Candice, Meleemario and Shiny Metacross dunking on this person, Nax, and it even felt like it was an attempt to turn Mifu and I against our own staff, which all four of the people I mentioned have transgressions that made them no better than the "big bads" they were pulling this over. Once she used an opening (which it appears to have changed Weasel for the worse, more on him in a bit), which caused an already large community fracture into a fissure. Had you even tried diplomacy and tried being open to critique rather than forcing your way with slitting throats and torching bridges, this may not have erupted into what it is now, but, c'est la vie I suppose. I did not bend to what they wanted in the "sit-down", and this apparently soured her opinion on me, which will come into play in a bit. I left Fun Police and the "sit-down" once Nax and and the other person were removed for illegitimate reasons (Nax having brought up concerns about how this was being handled).

The second, is Weasel, who I'm much more disappointed with than angry. Weasel was someone I considered a friend for a long time, but the changes I noticed over time since the Marisa situation are distressing. Much more distant, conflicted, and seems to be adopting a more "nothing personnel kid" persona as opposed to his pleasant, approachable personality, and is currently also defending the Zdoom position and even labeled things as a smear campaign. Weasel, you need to stop, look at yourself, look at your team, and ask yourself if this is worth defending? Zdoom's image is falling apart, and I've been reaching out in an attempt to try to get you to stop this, not make things worse. You're capable of much better than this, I know you are. You need to come clean about everyone's involvement, and stop taking the position of a rock fighting a raging river.

Now, you may have noticed, in the Zdoom thread regarding their stance on Marisa, Rachael says I and Marty were banned for "fanning flames", which is an absolute lie. I critiqued her. That's it. No aggression, no cut throat attitude, nothing. I admit I have little filter and will speak my mind right away, but the "official reason" she's used to permanently ban Marty and I (both of which have clean moderation histories) and ban me for a week from their Discord server are honestly, lies on her part. How do I know she did them? Because I was not banned before 7:15AM eastern standard time. Rachael, being in Europe, was awake at that time and took the opportunity to perform bans based on her own opinion of people, which, is a very bad image for an administrator, which is the last thing you want right now. Honestly, you need to step down if you can't moderate people without this needless aggression and if you feel the need to dish punishments out based on how much you hate someone. You can't try to turn other forum staffs against themselves. What I said about rather working with oldschool Metalhead, who was known for her intense aggression, still stands. This is coming dangerously close to the situation that happened with Carnevil back in 2011/2012 that caused Zandronum to be, and that's a horrible thing that should not be repeated. I've since been unbanned from their forums via Wildweasel.

On a personal note, this is giving me flashbacks to what happened when I was a moderator for a forum called "Mugen Fighters Guild" in 2020. There was an emotional abuser and catfisher within their walls, and because two admins and at least one fellow moderator hated some of the accusers and were friends with the accused, they told the accused she was under investigation, constantly blamed victims in private, and were completely unapproachable about the situation. I ended up walking out over that and the lead admin having a grudge against a user so bad that my words were twisted into a fake reason to permaban that user in 2018. This feels like an absolute repeat of this and this should never happen.

As for the other Zdoom staff, most of them are not innocent by proxy; nobody's truly spoken up, and the only one that's taken true accountability, or from what I've seen, as close as possible, is Caligari. This is unacceptable. If you want to be seen as a trustworthy staff in any capacity, all of you must take accountability. Will trust be regained overnight? No. But, it will be a start.

I feel like I've said my peace, and I bid you thanks for reading this and giving it thought.

-The Toxic Avenger, Zandronum co-administrator.