Welcome to Gaia! ::

As part of the WINGs crew, I often deal with join requests and applications. It's one of my main jobs in WINGs. I'm a writer, so I tend to be better able to analyse and application and work out whether the applicant will keep up with the rest of our members, or whether it is better to suggest one of our more casual RPs - or none at all.

Arch's application wasn't bad. It was nowhere near the best writing I'd ever seen. He was quite up to the standards of people like Strawberry, Aero (one of our beloved crew) and myself. But better than some other members. He presented himself well, was polite, and claimed to be an author, as well, and had won awards.

He checked out, so I let him in.

Protip: I'm an idiot.

For a while, Arch seemed relatively fine. He made a character and seemed to get on with RPing. He invited a few more people, who passed through the application process, people he'd supposedly RPed with before, or who were friends. Two were great members who we still appreciate today (though one is no longer a member due to school/home issues). Another I'm honestly still not sure wasn't a sock puppet. And the last...was his IRL "fiancée".

The moment Lamb, his fiancee joined, things started going...funny.

Arch started acting up in threads, like a young guy posturing for a girl. I'd seen my brother do it before and just rolled my eyes. Typical guy, I thought. And then, one night, it started escalating.

Before Lamb began RPing, we had worked out a plot for Arch that would get his characters involved with a vast majority of the main characters in the Rp. It was well established and it was going to turn out awesome.

The moment Lamb's character was approved (without her ever speaking to any of us), they started RPing solely together. Their first post completely disregarded our plot and compeltely ruined it. See, the idea had been that Saeslin (Strawberry's character) was building an airship for Angela for her birthday. They would need a crew (Arch and Lamb's characters) and several other characters (including my Tari and Aalis) would go along for the maiden voyage - that would end in kidnap and epic adventure >=O But the whole premise relied on their characters, Nik and Sylphinn (yes, Sylphinn) being ship-less and being desperate for work.

So, naturally, having them on an airship being SUPER DUPER EPIC AWESOME...kind of screwed over that plot.

Esh had to leave for a bit, so I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, posting to let them know they were fast writing themselves into a corner, where there would be no way for them interact with anyone.

I was patronisingly told to "calm down" and got a ridiculous explanation as to how the plot would now work. Unfortunately, it didn't. The original plot we'd worked out was a proper plot - one that spider webbed out to connect to many of the plots already in play. It was well crafted to include as many characters as possible and tie up loose ends.

Their plot was a linear A-B piece of nonsense, that included barely any of the other characters (and those it did include, did not work with their characterisation or history), connected to no other plot and served only to make them look awesome.

It did not.

Strawberry and I, politely and calmly, explained there was no way this was going to work. But, we were desperate for RPers and we are generally very nice people XD So we pulled many of our characters (and my entire culture) out of character and created a new plot to accommodate them

Protip: Don't go out of your way to accommodate idiots. You will regret it.

And regret it we did. Arch too this "win" and really started pushing buttons. And very soon, he would decide that I was his enemy.

ROFL


To continue!

Arch PMed me just as I was about to go to bed. See, Arch was in the airforce and was completely and utterly hung up about manliness, guns and airships. He also liked to think he knew about Steampunk, because he had watched an anime that...was Dieselpunk at the very best.

A little background - I am a Steampunk. No, not a cosplayer who puts a gear on their shirt and goes "ta-da!" but a proper member of the sub-culture. I know the genre, I live the lifestyle (Victorian home remedies for my arthritis, home made food and handmade clothing, etiquette, etc.) and I dress as a Steampunk. So I know my genre and I know what I'm talking about.

Arch...did not.

Anyway, Arch PMs me, wanting to start a thread about airships and airship classifications. Now, WINGs is more socio-political Steampunk rather than the clichéd "EVERYONE HAS SHIPS AND THEY GO PEW-PEW!111". We had a few ships in play, but they really weren't the focus. But I didn't want to turn him down, so since WINGs is a huge collaborative RP, I told him to add it to the existing thread and we'd all discuss it.

I logged out and tried to sleep. No dice. I was too sore that night to sleep, so I logged back on. Only to find that not only had Arch disobeyed my order, as crew, and created a thread on airship classifications, rather than adding to the existing one, he had borrowed from a popular RPG and was trying to make the classifications cannon.

The issue was, they completely defied the idea of Steampunk being focused on the unique and handmade, instead trying to push the mass-production idea, and trying to make these classifications cannon. Classifications that didn't fit with anything already used in the RP or with the era.

Protip: Airships cannot reach G-Force -.-

I was sore, exhausted and completely unamused. Still, I politely pointed out that he had defied my order to add to the thread, and then I did what we all do in WINGs - I discussed his ideas and how they would fit in WINGs and the idea of Steampunk. Many members of the crew also lent their voice, too.

Arch was furious. He claimed that I didn't like any of his ideas (note, this was the first idea of his I'd really turned down - for valid reasons, too) and that I was crushing his creativity. And how he "knew" Steampunk and I was clearly wrong.

The crew told him to knock it off and that the thread would be a discussion, and that it would need tweaking to work in the RP.

Arch, however, was now nursing a grudge against me, and it would soon become very very obvious.

Okay--this next bit is kind of unrelated to the RP but it also sort of was a catalyst for him going a bit nutso. First of all, by this point you have to understand that none of us really liked Arch. In addition to the drama he'd always caused and the fact we were a little annoyed that his fiance never spoke to any of us--despite being in our guild, he also had the tendency to make a lot of snide little remarks that kind of implied he was shocked we'd managed to run the guild so long without his super awesome suggestions. He was quite chauvanistic and the guild was run by all girls--except one other guy. So a lot of his remarks felt like he was going "you poor, foolish females!"

So yeah...we were all kind of...wanting to smack him.

In WINGS we have this forum for discussing hobbies and things. And Cheeva posted up this thread where she could show off some of the hand made stuff she makes. While we were all in there having a discussion about steampunk styled clothes, Arch pops in, makes a snide remark that implies we're all elitest and links us to his thread where he and his fiance will be showing their extreme costume making skills.

He spent a lot of time bragging about how awesome they were at making costumes.

So...we all went and looked at the thread. Not only was the intro very snarky and aimed at Chee, but the costume was really bad. Just........it was bad. I wish I was exaggerating. It looked like some kind of pseudo Victorian mourning outfit. I have pictures on photobucket, but I feel it would be mean to post them.

First of all, they didn't "make" the costume from scratch like he'd implied. The Fiance vaguely altered some clothes. Like, adding trim and buttons to store bought jackets and skirts. It was just not cohesive, it didn't fit well, it was wrinkled and most of all, it was very much not at all steampunk in the slightest.

So, because he'd ASKED for critique, Cheeva gave them a lengthy, very polite critique on how to make the costume more flattering toward the fiance's figure, less ugly (though she didn't use those words) and more steampunk. Arch came back and basically said "Wow, thanks! We're not doing any of that because we wanted it to look exactly how it looks and some of your advice is bad!"

There was more critiquing, lots of upset PMs, I'm pretty sure fiance went on hiatus because we were all so mean and horrible.

It was basically just a huge mess because he asked for critique and he got a very, very nice critique that Chee spent several hours on--she even included sketches of how to improve it. I remember one PM remark was that the fiance took a hiatus because otherwise she would have "crushed Chee beneath her boot" or something.

I think this was another case where I had to step in as VC and tell everyone to chill out or else.

Tip: Don't ask for advice, critique, etc unless you can handle it. It doesn't matter if it's about the RP or what. Because honestly, if you're really rude to people outside the RP then eventually, as much as people try to be objective, if they can't stand you--it's going to make it really, really, really hard to RP with you politely.

I honestly think this was the point we should have realized that this thing was just not going to work. We probably should have banned them both at this point but I'll admit that I felt maybe we (the crew) were being biased and a little harsh with them. And so I kept pushing for people to hold off and not ban them yet. <____> Derp.

The sad thing is that this went on for months and months and months and months. And this is just how they were acting like jerks. It's not even getting into the horrible RP posts and characters yet.

BUT WE WILL GET THERE. Everyone needs to hear about the clicky clicky boots. emotion_awesome

He was very, very much like that. And he very much did not like women having an opinion. We proved this when a MOD friend of ours joined WINGs. She has a male avatar on Gaia and Arch, thus, assumed she was a guy.

And he sucked up to her like nothing we'd ever seen @_@

So not only was he egotistical, he was very very sexist.



I think the lesson was more not to pander to people who are determined not to listen. Let them write themselves into the inevitable corner and let them come to you.

I will and I will make them crawl to me and beg! *evil laugh*
I might not do that, but I won't make too many accomodations. >.<