There's a massive Shiron post that I can't even fit in a screenshot and I don't even understand why he's wrote it. I'll just copy and paste because it's too long and somebody can translate this. Be ready, it's a big one. Apologies for taking up the thread with this bullshit beforehand. Alright? Alright. Here it goes.
Shiron Post:
This is an odd-ban: shouldn't I be banned to under the logic for this ban? Why am I not? Especially when I'm quoted supposedly breaking the same thread rules. If not for that, then for linking Poodlestrike's old posts earlier in the thread, or something? Surely some of that would fall under the not-relitigating old incidents rule in the OP? This is just getting really confusing
Not that I want to be banned. Far from it.
Though I have become very disappointed in the staff, and do not trust them at all, and I have made that clear numerous times over, I DO NOT want to be banned.
Because the simple fact is... I have nowhere else to go. If I were to say, hypothetically be permanently banned from here, I don't know where to turn. Especially since I really don't like Discords and the like and as many problems as this site has, there are still so many wonderful people here and even if I mostly lurk and don't talk directly to them or anything, I don't want to lose that. There's no place I've found like this, and I severely doubt my own experience to find anything close.
Especially since all my old haunts, stuff like Serebii's message boards, BulbaGarden, Smogon's message boards, etc, while trying their best in their own ways, none of them are anywhere close to this site and the amount of love I feel for it and the amount of users on it that I dearly, truly appreciate and wish the best for, even if, as someone who's primarily a lurker, I don't express those feelings anywhere near as much as I should. The community here is awesome, and I don't want to lose it, and if I were to look for somewhere else, I wouldn't even know where to begin, and have severe doubts of by ability to find any such place, nevermind the fact that I wouldn't want to leave those fantastic people behind regardless.
NONETHELESS, while I am terrified of losing this place, I also can't help who I am.
I am an incredibly empathetic, person, to fault.
Like, even when I'm just watching something on Netflix/Crunchyroll/YouTube or whatever, when a character in a fictional work or something acts in a particularly heinous way or some other way that I I don't agree with it, I often have to pause the video and essentially "roleplay" as the characters to work out my feelings regarding the situation. Like I recently rewatched Code Lyoko for instance on Netflix recently, and despite knowing that Ulrich and Yumi are both tweens just discovering their sexuality for the first time and thus doomed to make mistakes, as so many of us do at that age when it comes to romance and trying to figure it out, I still had to pause it a lot because of how consistently they were idiots and kept making the same mistakes over and over again, even if I understood exactly what was happening and what they were going for. Despite them being fictional characters, my empathy for Ulrich's and Yumi's true feelings for each other was so strong I had to pause and just work out waaay better ways that could have gone, a lot.
And that's just FICTIONAL characters, nevermind when stuff like that happens with very real people, like the users of this site.
So the point being, while I DON'T want to banned in any way, well, I suppose you can say my empathy takes precedent there (NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR MYSELF TO ACTUALLY BE BANNED IN ANY WAY).
And if I were, hypothetically, to be banned, in a fight to make this a better place for so many people who are clearly hurting, clearly being ignored (like just in this VERY THERAD FOR INSTANCE: so many people are trolling TransEra and other communities and getting absolutely no punishment for it, whereas members of these communities say even the slightest thing out of turn out of their frustration, and they get permanently banned, all while more people come in to "just ask questions" about the concerns of TransEra and other communities, and the cycle repeats), who have clearly been wronged...
I DON'T WANT TO put myself at risk in any way to protect them. That shouldn't be necessary, in any way.
But if I have to, if it's indeed necessary, despite the idea itself terrifying me and I'm scared about the idea of having to find a new online home and all that, I will ALWAYS put others like that ahead of myself and my own fears, because that's just who I am.
Elapsam semel occasionem non ipse potest Iuppiter reprehendere
Not even Jupiter, [ruler of the Gods,] can find a lost opportunity.
Those are words I truly try my best to live by.
So while I'm honestly terrified to speak up (which I shouldn't be and itself is a clear demonstration of a problem), even if it puts myself at risk, if it helps TransEra, MuslimEra, AsianEra, and so many other communities at all, whatsoever, I will gladly shoulder that burden and take those risks if there's even the slightest chance of my own fight and my own words making the slightest difference at all.
I don't know what those chances are, and at this point, admittedly, am pretty skeptical.
But no matter how skeptical and cynical I become, at the same time, I know that chance is NOT 0%. Nowhere close.
No matter what, there's always a chance.
And that's something I'm not willing to give up on. For both the good of communities like TransEra, AsianEra, MuslimEra, among others, and indeed, even staff themselves.
To that end, I hope the staff are indeed reading this with open minds, and truly trying their best to take all of this to heart, and if you had to pick ANYTHING from this message as a takeaway, JUST ONE THING, I would say it would be this, which is what I myself learned as a moderator back in the day on NarutoFan forums when I was a super/global/whatever you want to call it moderator there and to not make the same mistakes I myself made there and to not make any decisions that would leave you with potential regrets in the future, as I still have to this day due to my own decisions from that time. This was originally posted in a ban-appeal ticket, and I don't mean to bring it up to relitigate that ban, far from it, see the ticket thread itself where I didn't even attempt to do that there, but that I mean what I say and mean to convey my own regrets and mistakes from my time as a moderator and hope the staff don't repeat my own mistakes from back then, that is all:
"To add one more thing to this, in addition to the whole subject of transphobia, I have to admit one more particular reason this bothers me is because of a particular mistake I made while I was a global mod/advisor of the NarutoFan forums.
While I was active there, one of the things that happened was legal Crunchyroll fansubs popped up for Naruto for the first time.
But of course not only that. At the same time, for lack of a better term, a "bootleg" group called BakaSubs I believe also popped up, whose whole thing was somehow managing to get access to Crunchyroll's fansubs before they actually went live, and releasing them early, through torrents and the like, while pretty much claiming them as their own work and getting internet fame off releasing other people's work, legal work, early.
Seeing this, I so badly wanted to bring up the idea of completely banning discussion/leaks to BakaSubs because fansubs were bad enough and still a thing at the time, but those were stolen official subs, and there was no reason for there to be links for them period instead of telling them to wait.
Moreover, because there were legal versions of subs, that is, Crunchryroll's actual stuff, I also pondered whether links to fansubs should be allowed at all.
Because yes, for most me, Crunchyroll's fansubs would be a week behind the Japanese release.
But it was still a legal way of watching the series, with no consequences.
So I so desperately wanted to bring up the discussion of banning not only links to BakaSubs, but banning links to Naruto fansubs in the Anime section period, as they were not only still obviously illegal but completely unnecessary and if someone can't wait one week, just one goddamn week, well, they can get fucked at that point, was my thought process.
But due to a combination of my social anxiety, being scared that I would be laughed out of the room, and knowing that even if the mod team somehow did agree with me and hear me out, Tazmo (the owner of both the forums and the main site at the time) would still have links to fansubs on the main site regardless gave me so much pause I never so much as actually broached the subject.
And this is all something that went down over 10 years ago at this point.
But I still regret not brining it up, because, well, of course, even bringing up the subject would have been a scary change from the status quo of weekly threads for that stuff and there's no way of knowing if I would have just been laughed out of the room, and even if I weren't, how such change would be received.
To put it in short, I know the thoughts going through my head were the right thing to do but my social anxiety and fear of change just made me do nothing and let problems like that continue to fester instead.
And my choice of inaction, not knowing what happens if I would have acted differently, if even if I hadn't fought against fansubs in general and the hard work put in the animation team, if I had at least stuck up for the hard work of the people working for Crunchyroll at the very least instead of passively letting thread after thread be made for BakaSubs each week instead and let them get credit for stealing their work just because they released it earlier...
It still haunts me from time to time, even all this time later, how things might be different had I at least opened my mouth and got a discussion going in the modroom.
The point of this whole diatribe?
I don't want anyone on the staff on the site to make the same type of mistakes I made, to potentially have the same regrets over inaction that I do even years after the fact. The wondering if they did the right thing or not. The wondering if they could have done something more.
Because that stuff doesn't go away, even years after you stop visiting a site like that.
At least it doesn't for me.
Because yeah, I can only speak to my personal case. But in that case, a decade later, those regrets and doubts and questions still linger.
And in my case, that's just over stuff about how we should handle a very particular type of illegal content on a fansite.
That ain't even touching on subjects like transphobia, attacks on people who they are as human beings which they have absolutely no control over. Something that has a very real affect on many members of the community's mental well being and sense of safety.
So yeah, the points of all that being, if I still have regrets over not speaking up over BakaSubs and perhaps fansubs in general on the fansite I moderated over a decade ago, I can't imagine how heavily some of the decisions that have to be made, one way or the one, are weighing on the staff right now, because if what I went through wasn't easy, I can't begin to imagine how the decisions on what to do or not do or whatever about this situation is
But the point being that whatever is decided, make sure it's something that you won't have any regrets over.
Because whether it's a decision I agree with or not, I don't want any of the staff to go through what I did and have regrets about doing the right thing or not, regrets about being silent when you should have spoken up, or anything like that.
Even if it's not what I and others want to hear, I want to make sure that whatever decision is made is one that will allow for no regrets, because doing otherwise just isn't worth it.
So please. I know you probably don't need to hear any of this from me, and might even find this condescending, and I don't blame you if so, but I suppose this is a case of me myself not wanting to have any further regrets than I already do and not wanting to repeat the mistakes I personally made in the past, and not speak up when I could have.
Because the only way to know how things will go is if you do indeed speak up. Nothing starts until then.
As one of my favorite video game quotes go,
"Elapsam semel occasionem non ipse potest Iuppiter reprehendere"
"Not even Jupiter can find a lost opportunity."
So please, whatever you do decide, don't let this be your own lost opportunity.
And that's all I want to say for now I guess.
Be well.
ShironRedshift."
(And again, just to be clear, NONE OF THIS IS A CALL FOR ME TO ACTUALLY BE BANNED. I DO NOT WANT TO BE BANNED. FAR FROM IT. This is just me venting my feelings. That is all).
