Hiya, folks.

By now, it's no secret as to what we've been dealing with since this month started, and there have been a lot of hurt feelings, anger, and understandable fear due to a lot of things that happened while we weren't even paying attention.

I don't mean simply staff, either - I mean all of us.

Now, suddenly there are all sorts of folks leaving here - supposedly for good - and many others standing in a state of shock, worried as to what might come next.

Well, as far as it goes with just plain ME? That's what this particular blog is for.

Let's start off with my general opinion on the whole matter.

... and that concludes it.

When I opened the forums page on the first of this month, I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined what I came across. The first clue was a friend asking if I was leaving too - and I wondered, "what is he talking about", so I investigated.

Twenty minutes later, I was actually crying.

Jeric was one of the folks here who actually managed to bring me out of my little social shell, and he made me feel so very welcome here that I eventually ended up applying for staff. That took guts on my part - Aspergers' plus generally being weird doesn't leave me with a dearth of good experiences within social forums. But even with the scattered conversations we had, it was obvious I was in not only good company, but good hands.

Eloquence was the one who trained me. There was more time taken between myself and Elo for teaching me what to do than any other single member of staff... not that they were lacking; Elo was just the only one who truly prioritized making sure I had a working knowledge of what the heck I was doing. A tall order, as I had NEVER IN MY LIFE been a part of a social forum like this one - but Elo helped me put the intimidating parts behind me.

Seeing they had left felt like someone had suckerpunched me right in the heart.

I started to try to look into the situation, then I remembered a little something about myself: I hate politics.

So instead, I immediately dropped my 'hunt for the truth' and began PMing folks... asking how they were doing, offering an ear or a shoulder, and generally trying to be a field medic in the middle of the fallout. I did my best to let folks know that A: I wasn't leaving, and B: I'm here for them.

I got in touch with EVERYONE involved - BOTH sides - and offered myself as a neutral party to vent, cry, joke or simply talk to... and I didn't WANT any details of what happened, truth or not.

And I STILL don't want to know, don't care to know, and don't feel like prying to find out.

Now, before you simply toss that off as ignorance, allow me to explain to you that, indeed, you're right - it is PURPOSEFUL, BLATANT IGNORANCE. I am consciously making the decision that I truly do not give the first damn about who SAID what, who DID what, or what happened as a result. There's already a lot of folks speaking their minds on the matter, and I'm not much for bandwagons anyway.

This is NOT an act of heartlessness on my part - quite the contrary, it's BECAUSE I wish to maintain a neutral status in this that I REFUSE to find out the truth. I would much rather keep myself available for any and all who might need someone in this less-than-stellar moment for the forums, than color my attitude towards others and deny them the friend they might truly need so very badly in this eclipsing wake.

And that is completely MY choice. I am well within my rights to simply not get involved in the war on ANY side, but to crawl under the line of crossfire and rescue the wounded. With that said, I am here for anyone who feels sad, angry, lost, hurt, distrustful, doubtful or ashamed over the current state of affairs.
Consider this a public PM to everyone out there in Forumland:

For what it's worth, this has hit me hard, and it stings like you wouldn't believe... but at the same time, I feel compelled to do everything in my power to keep something like this from happening again.

I am now making it a matter of public record that the day all of this happened, October the first, I applied for my voting rights within Poniverse - something I would NEVER have done on my own, because I hate politics... but this whole situation has made me feel as though it is a necessary step for me to take.

As far as the rest of you wonderful people go, if you're feeling down about all of this, drop me a line - I have no interest in the politics of it all, so we can both be supportive of each other apart from this whole ordeal.

And the [bLACK ARMBAND] on my status? That will stay as it is for the remainder of the month - perhaps even longer - as I feel that this incident still requires me to show that I miss my friends, even as I gear up to put my nose to the grindstone to try to ensure something of this manner never happens again on MY watch.

Thank you for your time. *bows*