Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

It's a cultural attitude that needs to be examined. The "troubled genius" archetype (generally only applied to white men, not accidentally) is ... well I'm trying to find a less loaded word than "toxic" but how better to describe it?

It's a thing that needs to happen in the grand scheme of things though, and it will happen no matter who tries to oppose it, it's like a force of nature. Generally, the most innovative people that pushed art, science and other fields to their limit were also some of the fuckiest. Not always, I can think of plenty that aren't, you just need to know discipline and restrainment. But it's common not to unfortunately, and no one should accept it, but should understand it.

And please don't start with the race-baiting bs, it's got nothing to do with it. Michael Jackson is one of the prime examples of that archetype, and he's black.
 
Hey all.

I haven't been involved with the community for maybe ten years at this point. I don't have recent experience, so maybe this won't be relevant.

During the years that I *was* involved here (2005-2011?), it felt like the community was split into two halves: The skilled content creators saw themselves as a higher platform, and looked down on the newer unskilled users.

I say this because I moved between the two halves.

During the first half-ish of my time with SRB2, most of my time was with the newer/bottom-half users. (I have specific names in mind, but I don't think any here would recognize them.) We had splinter forums, where we would joke around, ░░░post, and maybe talk about content development.

These were the people that I netgamed with. I think that, looking back, I would have called these people friends. Eventually, I only played SRB2 during the design process of my own levels, or to play others' work. SRB2 stopped being a game that I played on its own. When SRB2 still was a game that I played for its own sake, these were the people that I played with.

When I started getting better at designing levels (especially after my first OLDC submission), I transitioned to the "upper half" of the community. At the time, the upper half of the community basically was the regulars on #srb2fun, and the #srb2fun community shaped my expectations on what internet maturity looked like.

I remember the us-vs-them mentality being a big deal in the #srb2fun regulars, where the newer half of the community was the "them".

I haven't been around to see the way that TehRealSalt helped to shift the community mentality with SUGOI and SUBARASHII (sp?). If the community mentality really has shifted (I don't know), that sounds like a good thing.

I don't have many thoughts on Mystic specifically. But I like kindness. I like kind places. If this community becomes kinder because Mystic is gone, that sounds pleasant.

I wish you all the best going forward.

- BZ4

(I seriously do get an email whenever anyone PMs me here, if you ever want to say "hi".)
 
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It's a thing that needs to happen in the grand scheme of things though, and it will happen no matter who tries to oppose it, it's like a force of nature. Generally, the most innovative people that pushed art, science and other fields to their limit were also some of the fuckiest. Not always, I can think of plenty that aren't, you just need to know discipline and restrainment. But it's common not to unfortunately, and no one should accept it, but should understand it.

And please don't start with the race-baiting bs, it's got nothing to do with it. Michael Jackson is one of the prime examples of that archetype, and he's black.

And Michael Jackson was villified for his weirdness even before the accusations came out, whereas people like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are much more tolerated by their peers.
 
Apparently this thread has gone from Mystic has done mean things to a general agreement that Mystic is a bad person... thus far I can kinda agree or accept your opinions.


But this is derailing at an alarming rate. Now I am reading things like white males with anime profile pictures accused of being toxic.


Can we please focus on the topic at hand or move forward? I kinda liked the positive outlook of a more accepting Srb2 MB instead of these forms of generalized vilification. Thank you very much.
 
Good riddance.

At the start I thought he was just a shithead that held the game and it's community back with senseless elitism and archaic beliefs (especially after my short-lived time here after the launch of 2.2 as me and him tore into each other over some dumb BS about why he thinks analog controls are evil), but the community backing behind him and agreeing with him made me feel like I was outnumbered and too scared to keep participating in the community without feeling like I didn't belong here.

The stories and perspectives given here are much worse and more alarming, however. Jesus Christ. It's a massive relief he's no longer a part of this, as it seemed to affect every step of this game and it's community's development; in far more ways that matter than just on terms of making a game about hedgehogs.

Godspeed to everyone in this community, and I hope the future is as bright for y'all as it feels radiating from here. You're all strong for speaking up. Wishing the best, dudes.
 
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Oh my god holy fuck BZ4's back.

If you ever have the time you should get back to mapping. That upper and lower rank you were referring to is just about nonexistent, and it would be wonderful to see old faces surface again.
 

BlueZero!! It's been so long! It's amazing how this event is bringing all of these people back; really says something, huh?

(On Mystic, I still want to make an actual post about this, but I'm waiting to get access to an old drive with screenies on it. I'm not in a rush tbh)
 
As a long time speed runner of this game, hearing Mystic gone actually makes me extremely hopeful for the future of the game. Whenever something was discovered, he always seemed to be at the center of "I don't want that in my game". I don't really have any "Mystic was a jerk" stories, but way back in 2.0 when strafe flying glitch was discovered, he was at the front of saying he didn't want it in his game.

Even recently, he and Rob were both very adamant about their disgust with how Tails was being used in speedruns. While I can't speak of the other mods, Mystic and Rob definitely helped push how bad it was for the game that Tails was so fast.

So all in all, I'm really hopeful for the future of SRB2. Especially for the speed community.
 
I figured I might as well give my view on the whole situation.

I've known about SRB2 for a really long time, probably around 12 years, but I only got the game for myself after 2.2 came out, because by that point I had a computer that could run the game. And with the game came an involvement in the community. I gotta say, when I joined the community, there was one thing that stuck out to me immediately.

The negativity.

I had never seen such a heaping helping of cynicism before, and it was really upsetting to see certain things. In particular, a lot of people trying to make something for the first time would be put down for seemingly no reason other than being inexperienced.

If that stemmed mostly from Mystic, I'm really optimistic for the future of this community. I don't want to see people being put down for being new at something, I want to see them encouraged to keep trying to do better, and I think we're gonna be seeing more of the latter in the future. Here's to SRB2!
 
I'm still a relatively new member in this community. Joined ~2017-2018. I mostly lurked and always thought Mystic to be an incredibly cyncial if mature and stern individual who seemed to get more unstable day by day.

IIRC ~2018 he stepped down from being admin on the Discord server by his own admission and disappeared for awhile until v2.2s release.

After v2.2s release, I felt the discord server feeling more uptight and restrictive as more people joined in, I felt there was buildup happening, to what, I didn't know, but it was definitely buildup.

Then the pedo stuff with Purps happened with his eventual permaban and police report

Then the pedo accusations happened by Mystic and then
snap-fingers-line-icon-easy-260nw-1159335340.jpg


(i was there when it happened and holy shit yikes)

All of the events leading to Mystic's Permaban happened, and uh I thought it was just for this one incident, but wow, I had no idea there was this much shit on him.

This made me rethink not only 2.1 AND 2.2's development, but also, the entire community up to when I joined/when SUGOI/SUBARASHII happened.

I can see v2.3's eventual release ascending to godhood now.


Good fucking riddance, Holy shit
 
As far as my actual experience with Mystic goes, I dodged the bullet way back during 1.08/1.09.4 days, but the rude mentality people had was very present looking back at those old post of mine, people were incredibly quick to judge and give just about anything that isn't proper feedback. I left the community very quickly, didn't even bother with the IRC, and only came back to play the game itself occasionally until 2.2 where I finally decided to become apart of the community again under a new name, and no I'm not going to talk about my old name.

Almost instantaneously, there comes a thread about analog control, a discord discussion and eventually channel that also got closed down. From this experience alone, I've made the quick realization, at least with Mystic AND Rob, that the moderation is poor. Poor arguments, poor justification, flat out ignoring reasonable stuff, etc because "statistics" and yadayada, and closing shit down because they don't feel like debating it anymore. It repeated with other things such as Super debates as well, and I've honestly learned from going around the community how much of a hold Mystic had on the games direction, which, with those two experiences, I could already tell I wasn't a fan of.

I personally had not ran into any sort of issue with Mystic, but I'd be blind to not see how he acts and treated others, and how it was getting worse and worse. From calling people stupid because he didn't like things he hears, to being insanely stubborn on his decisions in the process, pretty much openly insighting hate on a member's creation, making baseless accusations he should of damn well knew would bite him in the ass, and pretty much giving middle fingers to the community as a whole when he has a fit.

Not my community anymore

Really, all I can say is the guy is..misguided, hardheaded, and cannot articulate himself properly no matter how much he tries. He's controlling, and over the past few months more and more people have been going against him. It's a shame he's that kind of person and rather than just calling him a piece of shit, I'd rather he eventually reflect on his actions.
...but this has been going on for years from what I've gathered, so I really doubt that will happen.

All I can really say for certain is that's the game's better off without him, and the developers can finally do what they want.

Anime Fans Are Kinda Garbo
this person got that typical anime girl pfp (which is already a red flag for me).
This is not funny, the last thing we need to be doing is belittling others.
 
This is not funny, the last thing we need to be doing is belittling others.

Truth. Consider the irony that you guys chose to belittle someone for something like that in this thread. Please don't do that sort of thing, that's EXACTLY the thing the community should be moving away from.

Everyone has different likes/dislikes, and comes from different cultures/subcultures. Judge based on someone's character, not based on petty differences, okay?

The temptation to roast someone nasty like Mystic for those petty things can be high, but don't. There are plenty of better things to criticize. Choosing topics like that just makes all your cool neighbors here who like those things too feel a little hurt. :(
 
I never dealt with Mystic myself, but from reading his interactions on the Discord, I can pretty confidently say that him being off the team is a great thing for the game (and of course the developers).


He had a very strong blame mentality when it came to any kind of criticism of the game, usually blaming either the player or Modern Sonic rather than admitting any kind of fault in SRB2. Blame leads to stagnation, not improvement.
 
This is not funny, the last thing we need to be doing is belittling others.

Truth. Consider the irony that you guys chose to belittle someone for something like that in this thread. Please don't do that sort of thing, that's EXACTLY the thing the community should be moving away from.

Yeah, I wasn't gonna call attention to it because I figured it was inevitable that people would have such an attitude (and that I'd probably just get called out for also having an anime profile pic lol) but when you think about it, being complacent with users belittling others was exactly what allowed things to get so bad in the first place.

---

Anyway, since I'm here, I may as well talk about my own experiences with Mystic. I will say that in the few interactions I've had with him I did get sort of haughty, elitist vibes about the way that he spoke, but at the time it simply came off to me as the voice of an experienced developer that was sick of answering the same questions over and over for 10 years. And if that was what it was, I thought at the time, I couldn't really blame him too hard.

I was never around for the worst of the things he did, so until recently my impression of him mostly stayed the same.
But after seeing some of the things he'd done and hearing from the people in this thread and people on Discord that he'd more-or-less always been this way, I guess I must have been wrong about him.
At any rate, I hope that the change in situation is able to help him reflect on his actions.

As for what this means for the game, I'm excited to see the talent that helped shape 2.2 into such a great experience getting a chance to flex their creative muscles a bit more. While I am quite attached to the game in its current state, I won't object to any decision that is to the benefit of this game and its future. After all, while this most likely means a shift in vision for the game, it also, hopefully, means leadership that is much more receptive to community feedback.

I guess that I'm not really able to contribute much of anything to the thread that hasn't already been said, huh? But I guess the bottom line is that I'm glad to see the most turbulent source of SRB2-related drama be past us so that the game and the community can flourish in the coming decade. Maybe this will be the decade where the game is finished...? Nah, who am I kidding?

Also, 1998 to 2009, then 2009 to 2020... might this be the start of a trend of leadership changing every 11 years? I can't wait for 2031 when the anime profile pics stage a coup on Sonic Team Jr. (Mystic excluded, of course.)
 
I guess since everyone's putting it all out there, I might as well tell my story. It goes far back, so it might seem a bit petty to dig up now, but I still think about it a lot.
I have a hard time saying how long I've been in this community. I originally joined in 2006, I was 12 years old at the time. Around 2007 I was working on SonicCE, at the time he was called NSonic because my handle was nitro_the_hedghog misspelled and all. I intended to create "NPack" which was an entire character pack, which I had an editing thread for. After doing the base standing frames for Sonic, I did front frames for everyone else. You could say I got a little out-of-hand with the front frames, after about 12 or so Mystic saw fit to lock my editing thread and told me I couldn't have it back until I released something playable of the pack. I took this very hard, feeling as though I had done something wrong in not working to make something playable. That was when I rushed to put out the NSonic demo, which is still circulating around today. If you notice, SonicCE's front frames are much better detailed than any other angle. That's because I had the front frames finished before my thread got locked, and the rest were rushed to get it back.
Mind you, this wasn't my first character mod. I had made several already before this event, so Mystic had no precedent to assume I wasn't going to see any of it through. It wasn't until years later that I would realize that I had done nothing wrong, and that it was Mystic who was in the wrong. I didn't owe him or this community my productivity in order to release something playable. After this rush to the finish combined with Knux 2.0 rush to the finish, and some goings-on in my personal life, I was burnt out. I left the community around 2011, occasionally checking in and posting but not developing anything, and didn't officially return until 2018 to begin work on pointy sonic.
I'm sad to have spent so much time away from the community I loved, but I'm glad I got out of here while I was young and impressionable. Now that I'm back, I intend to try and cultivate a healthier creative community here to the best of my ability.
 
And Michael Jackson was villified for his weirdness even before the accusations came out, whereas people like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski are much more tolerated by their peers.

Thank you. What I said is not "race baiting" (also what does that mean?). There is a general reluctance of Americans/Westerners, particularly White culture, to admit any degree of wrongdoing. It's all connected.

I'm just saying, Mystic's example is specific to him but, as with anything, also indicative of larger cultural forces.

---------- Post added at 07:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:43 AM ----------

It's a thing that needs to happen in the grand scheme of things though, and it will happen no matter who tries to oppose it, it's like a force of nature. Generally, the most innovative people that pushed art, science and other fields to their limit were also some of the fuckiest. Not always, I can think of plenty that aren't, you just need to know discipline and restrainment. But it's common not to unfortunately, and no one should accept it, but should understand it.

And please don't start with the race-baiting bs, it's got nothing to do with it. Michael Jackson is one of the prime examples of that archetype, and he's black.

Other than the "race baiting bs" part (addressed above), I agree with the rest of your post. We're saying the same thing.

Except on the solution.

Yes, the artist needs to have discipline and restraint; we should all be able to expect ourselves to treat all people as our inherent equals. I might know more than you in one area. You know more than me in another area. Together we are stronger. That's the ideal mentality.

However it's also on us, as in everyone, as in communities, to not tolerate it, culturally. Because it's a symbiotic relationship. The artist is abusive because the abuse is tolerated and justified by others; the victims are ignored or don't feel safe in speaking up. That's why you're only hearing people coming forward with examples of Mystic's abuse now. They didn't feel safe speaking up before.

So my point is that, while Mystic/Rob alone are responsible for their actions, so too is the community for ignoring the warning signs and red flags. Not that they should've been banned/removed earlier. But that the community is responsible for making it clear — to Developers, to Moderators, to whoever — that though they have different functions in the community, they are not real authority. Especially not on an unofficial fan game Sonic message board!!

They are not better than you or me, even though they're better in this specific area than you or me.

I've seen it elsewhere. I'm sure everyone has. Moderators act like cops in message boards all over the place. You give someone even just a little bit of power, combined with cultural adoration for authoritarianism, and you end up with situations like this.

My overall point is -- this kind of abusive behavior is not uncommon. There's no silver bullet magic fix. The main thing is to be aware, I guess.
 
Also, 1998 to 2009, then 2009 to 2020... might this be the start of a trend of leadership changing every 11 years? I can't wait for 2031 when the anime profile pics stage a coup on Sonic Team Jr. (Mystic excluded, of course.)

That's actually a good point, so far there's been 2 eras of SRB2, of exactly the same length. Yet in one the game was built from the ground up and polished till 2.0, which is fairly similar to how it is now, and in the other there only 2 major releases: 2.1 and 2.2. Only two!! True, one of them completely restructured the game, but still, comparatively the first era and the second are very different in approaches. The first was, like SSN said earlier, about learning and having fun, there were many versions released even though many quite rough, there was more experimentation. The second was about polishing what was already there, about "getting it right" and upholding a certain standard instead of trying new things, which is why development and releases slowed down considerably.
 
Hero worship can be one hell of a drug.

A lot of my formative years were involved in this community, playing the game ever since 1.09.4a, and Ive met tons of people i've considered friends, a handful are folks I still talk to today and think very highly of. Some of them are devs on SRB2/Kart now! One of em made something I even played as a kid and now I know him for reasons that aren't even about SRB2 (sup Miguel). Even tho I stepped away from this community finishing highschool, I wouldn’t be who I was if not for this game and ESPECIALLY for the people who took SSNTails’ fun doom mod and turned it into something I now regularly show people at my work.

Back in 1.09.4, Mystic was also, undeniably one of those people.

If any of you knew me around 2008 (i apologize lmao) you either knew me as a dumb little kid or yourself were also a dumb little kid. You probably also remember Mystic Realm being the hottest shit to exist. It almost felt like the REAL game back then since it had way more zones than vanilla and it had an original soundtrack to boot. Honestly MR being such a complete product was probably what blew my mind so much as a kid, realizing the potential SRB2 could have. Nowadays thats pretty laughable especially when compared to 2.2 Vanilla’s stages, ESPECIALLY the art direction, but i dunno ‘08 was a different time I guess.

A lot of SRB2 and in particular the creativity, even and especially in wild as fuck mods and SOC abuse for pre-LUA character abilities was fantastic to see and a major reason I’d check my summers looking at the Editing forum more than releases, just to see what people were doing. Heck I’d want to even learn how to mod the game on my own, tryna download CodeBlocks to compile SRB2 and do my own edits (that didn’t last long). This community was a hub for crazy and creative artwork in and about the game, and I’ll never forget moments like doing character sprite art on my moms broken down Lenovo laptop trying to make some cool fan character artwork. And while Mystic Realm was a benchmark back then of how awesome levels in this game could be, I’ll never forget one mod in particular that made me want to get into character abilities and the like: SRB2JTE

��

Yeah.

Its easy to look at and think fondly of those times, especially because a lot of their work back then was undeniably impressive. But while I never had a negative interaction with Mystic specifically—just a few run-ins with his friends calling me a fanboy—I did interact with JTE.

This decade has taught me a lot about people I used to respect lol, let’s just say that.

This topic has been overwhelmingly in favor of Mystic’s removal being a good thing. Only thing I’ve heard about the dude was bad stuff from my friends involved in the development in this game, and when I think back to 2.0 being such a buzzkill with nerfing custom characters into the ground, and Mystic being someone who stuck out to me as a voice of why that was a GOOD thing... Well when it comes to management issues that feels like writing on the wall, gotta say. I won’t be able to speak to personal experience with the dude and I won’t pretend to. Everything everyone has said here about their experiences working under, and interacting with, someone who’s had a net negative effect on people’s lives, is completely valid and should be respected.

Looking at what some ppl have said, though—luckily, that’s the minority—I think there’s some perspective being lost here.

And I can get why. THAT I can speak to.

It’s incredibly easy to look to someone you don’t have personal beef with, who's done stuff you admire and has helped shape who you are now, in part or in whole, and think of them as someone “great.” Maybe “misunderstood” if they get a lot of flack. You often want to feel like you’re being “balanced” by weighing in the good and the bad—sure, a lot of people take issue with them, but they’re good at what they do! Maybe they know what’s best but they’re just... really rough about it!

That’s an EASY way to think.

It’s also pretty selfish.

If a pattern emerges and there’s a common thread, that thread’s usually what you gotta acknowledge is the real issue, not the people speaking out. YOU may not have experienced what they’re saying, but overwhelmingly, people who aren’t you specifically HAVE had that experience, MORE than once, and more than just a handful of people have it. And gotta say seeing people here who’ve impacted the way I view art have their creativity crushed by Mystic is just incredibly painful to see. I’d hope that’d be a wakeup call—looks like it has, so far.

Sometimes it’s time to just listen to people, and recognize that even if someone did a lot of good, a lot of what shapes you into who you are today, even, they’re not immune from being a piece of shit.

I have personal experience with one person from here that 100% confirms that.

Hopefully other people wouldn’t need something that extreme to empathize with working with a shitty boss.


I wouldn’t be working where I am now without the creative outlet of SRB2. Something we should all realize though is that this game has been and always will be a COMMUNITY effort. The “official” version is simply people on their A-Game making work they want to. Even during 1.09.4 there were side projects that kicked Final Demo’s ass, and those eventually found some of their DNA in the base game we love today. That happened then, it’ll continue to happen in the future. This game’s simply too sick for that not to happen. Its been 15 years since I first played this game? It’s better than it’s ever been, and thats because of the people who grew up loving it.

And we should really recognize, it’s not individuals, it’s PEOPLE, that make SRB2 great. Whoever it is just cycles in and out. Right now we got amazing new talent on this game, one day they’ll pass the torch onto a new crowd who grew up on THEIR work. And I can’t wait to see that.

There’ll always be people like Mystic, people who have a cult of personality around em, behind projects. Something we could all be better about is trying to remove the myth from the man. Realize that just because someone’s on a development team doesn’t mean they’re any more knowledgeable than you.

Long live SRB2 and everyone who loves it ✌️


...also:

All these once perma-banned users coming back all at once. You love to see it.

YOOOOOOOOO haven't seen your name in about a DECADE holy CRAP — Edit: oh im just an idiot you’re more active than I am by a lot LMAO. How havent I seen you till now??? whatever everyone’s here to talk about Mystic it’s a party fuckit
 
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Hey. Gonna throw my hat into the ring, here.

I've been articulating my thoughts about this entire thing for a while now.
This is stuff I've typed over the course of several days, so forgive me if any of this is difficult to follow and/or inconsistent.

I joined this community back in 2007. To put it into perspective, Deep Sea, Arid Canyon, and Egg Rock were literally being teased about a few years later.

My initial impressions of how this community was managed, even then... they weren't exactly great. Everything about the environment at the time gave off bad vibes, and I felt afraid to interact with it. And a lot of that was a result of the existing staff. As a result, for a while, I kind of just sat to the side, reading up, staying within my boundaries.

This extended even to IRC -- and is part of the reason why I never participated in #SRB2Fun (and figuring out more stuff about that channel in particular, was probably a good thing, like... yikes).

The game itself though, I would continue to play for several, several years. But the community outside of it, for the longest time, made me never want to interact with it again in my entire life.

But as I've grown and as things have began to shift in the right direction, that mindset has changed.

So, yeah, moving on over to Mystic.

A lot of that, though, was a result of intimidation from Mystic. Their presence was the absolute antithesis of welcoming. All of the modded content I was trying to make for this game felt like it would have been shot down at the first opportunity. Although, at the time, that was mostly because it certainly didn't live up to the current quality standard left by the community. But I have reason to believe most people on the MB can see how that's something I have less to worry about these days, too.

To me, this decision is an actual landmark for SRB2 development and its modding community. Nobody has to be held back by that kind of intimidation I had looming over me for the entire decade and a half I've been a part of this community. For real. This is some pivotal stuff.

While I'm not a part of the development team, I've heard a lot from some friends who are, and most of them are convinced this is one of the most positive changes the SRB2 community has ever gone through.

On top of the outright gross and disrespectful shit that Mystic's been spewing for that time, too, I, myself, believe that this sort of thing is the exact type of boost the SRB2 community needed. That kind of behavior is absolutely unacceptable for anyone with some form of administrative role whatsoever.

Forgive me if this sounds mean-spirited, but thank god this happened.

I love the SRB2 community. I want to see it succeed. This is literally one of my favorite games of all time and I want to see it go places. It's heartwarming to know that it isn't being held back.

I have every reason in the world to view these changes in a positive light. Rock on, SRB2.
 
Since everyone is sharing their thoughts from their first experiences in the community until now, I figured dropping mine wouldn't hurt.

I stumbled accross this game in 2012, by complete accident while I was looking for another game and ended up figuring out this game had a community, and I wanted to give it a shot in spite of my not being all that good at English.
...And so I ended up with a couple of grammar and spelling infractions and a temp ban, although this one was more related to my own mistakes, but wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for grammar infractions.
(Mind you, 100% of said infractions were from Mystic or Rob)

Essentially, this didn't feel welcoming. It felt really high standard for just... a fangame community. I kind of stopped interacting with the community at this point out of fear, but kept on playing because I loved the game, and grew an appreciation for its modding potential.


Eventually 2.1 released and brought in that new thingy called Lua. This was exciting, so I eventually got myself together and got somewhat decent at it to make mods.
Back in that era there used to be a huge thread where everyone could post all of their stuff, and I mean, it was a really huge thread. I honestly loved seeing what everyone was up to!
...It ended up being locked because it was "too much moderation" (hear, infracting "low effort" content and people poking fun at it, the latter being the only reasonable clause if you ask me).
This kind of forced everyone to just try and make their own thread whenever they wanted to show off what they were working on, or, god forbid, show it on the IRC channel.
I've tried going on said IRC channel a grand total of 4 or 5 times following the closure of that thread, and, I suppose due to past insecurities never felt compelled to try and talk there past asking simple questions to get direct help because this place was so full of all those people who'd shoot down anything that doesn't fall within the quality standards.

Overall? The modding scene was so intimidating that I've grown not to want to show anything I'm making until it's polished or unique to the point where no one could talk shit about it, because of how many people I've seen get shot down or laughed at because all they did was say they wanted to work on a character and posted "nothing but an A1" as proof of concept.
This kind of thing is downright disrespectful in my opinion. It's demoralizing at best and, as someone who was, and is still actively modding the game, has made me uncomfortable, and scared shitless because of how afraid I was to just fall within the laughing stock category, and ended up developping a very self-deprecative personality around that time as a result, because I thought simply agreeing that "it's shit" was easier than arguing against it.


Fast forward to very recently, with the whole Super Mystic "biggest review bomb ever (tm)" Sonic incident on the official Discord, and I got to see a flame war resurfacing from a decade old drama, which the author of SMS himself even apologized for, alongside a baseless, very strong, accusation against someone else in public, in front of thousand of influenceable children on the official server as well not long after.
That alone makes me relieved that such people aren't the leading face of SRB2 anymore, past my own gripes with their handling of things in the past as stated in the paragraphs above.

I'm not worried about the game's future at all. The people that are still working on it all have great talent, and if anything, I think they'll be able to output their best. So best of luck to you all out there!
 

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