#the flight rising mods are all fucking assholes

[echoequinox]

Remember that fucking time I told Flight Rising that like, a decade ago I had used a secondary account to cheese stuff and I was trying to crack into it to get rid of all my stuff and put my dragons up for adoption and close out the account because I know secondary accounts were wrong and they fucking banned me for it

That was cool

#personal #the flight rising mods are all fucking assholes #'it affects the economy' grow up it affected it ten years ago #you think closing my account is gonna fix your broken ass shitty stupid png game you pricks #i'm STILL mad about it and i'm gonna be mad about it until the day i DIE #if you cowards let me back in i'll stop smearing your stupid shitty game but until then fuck off

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Wait what dragon game

Anonymous said: Over a DRAGON game???? I wasnt here for that whole ordeal but I feel like even with context that would still seem super fucking ridiculous            

It was over Flight Rising, which (for those who don’t know) is a virtual pet site where you collect dragons, dress them up, give them little pets (familiars) etc. Very simple and straightforward, and something I’ve been playing for almost 4 years now. I even run a discord server for it.

The issue is that there was this one familiar, one that I was very uncomfortable with for a lot of reasons, all centered around the fact that it was named W*ndigo. With the asterisk, of course. I thought about trying to get it changed, but the only forum thread about it had been dead for two years by the time I found it and the reactions to the op’s request were extremely bad. So I stayed quiet on the site and vented to my friends and panicked whenever I saw that damn thing in the game.

In June (?) of last year, someone actually messaged my blog here about it, a non-Native person who was looking to revive the thread and wanted to know if I could boost it. I very happily did so, and then I threw my two cents in on the thread as an actual Native person who also wanted the name to be changed.

Shit happened. The reaction was, yet again, very bad, including someone blaming Natives for the poverty crisis and our lack of influence in politics. Staff ended up deleting the thread without comment and without giving any explanation. Needless to say, I was less than happy.

So I started a new thread in early July. I very carefully laid out all the reasons why the name was bad, from cultural insensitivity to inaccuracy to the impact (or lack thereof) that changing it would have on non-Native players), with links to more information at the end. You can actually find a copy of that here, since one of my friends was smart enough to back up the thread on a document in case it was deleted.

The initial response was actually really good. People were kind and respectful, and we got a ton of support, including other Anishinaabe people and other Native people in general jumping in to offer their own input. Then, as it tends to happen in these situations, people started being assholes.

We got accused of not actually caring and just throwing support in blindly because many of us weren’t active on the forums, there was the general complaints about ~special treatment, "slippery slope” arguments in regards to other familiars, claims that that world’s w*ndigoag are different than Earth ones (???), complaints that none of my sources were from academics as if Native people’s lived experiences aren’t good enough, people switching from supporting to being against a name change because I was just too mean :(((, someone fucking saying "I feel [. . .] that this is still a race issue that is trying to be brought up"like no shit, a lot of people pinging mods for no reason, and a whole bunch of other racist bullshit. It got to the point where mods stepped in to delete any off topic replies, which I appreciated because they got real racist real fast. Here’s some screenshots.

Along with the bullshit on the thread though, there were people talking about it off-site. There was a ton of drama in other servers that were just people talking shit about me (and my friends in those servers defending me), there were submissions on an anonymous FR drama blog, and a shitton of tumblr posts about it.

One of which was this one. Where the op tried to subtly accuse me of faking being Native using things from my blog that were all removed from context (like me saying that I don’t want to be called Native American).

While the op apologized when I called them out, the other people doing the same shit (including someone on that thread calling me emotionally manipulative) did not and never acknowledged the hurt they caused me and other Native people. Even now, a good 7 months later, there’s still people complaining about it both on- and off-site.

Please keep in mind that all of the above shit, including everything linked and screenshotted, happened in the span of less than a day because staff deleted the thread that evening (after I had already logged off of everything for a breather) and then announced that they were changing the name of the familiar and all its related items.

Which is fucking awesome but got another horrible wave of hate, including a discussion thread that is still up and locked even though mine was deleted instead of locked for some ungodly reason.

So yeah. That’s the story.

#Anonymous