Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad

Charybdizs said:

Actually, you're totally right, I'm gonna correct this just so the precedent is clear and there's no confusion. :V

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That's really cool that you guys banned him. I didn't mean to make it a big thing, but it's really important I think for those affected to be defended and for people using their positions of power to oppress others to be removed from it entirely (which in this case, would be shutting the account down altogether).

Like others have said, I think it'd be good for him to share his side of the story since I don't know it and he's entitled to say his piece. But he doesn't really need to have direct access to everyone here in order to do it.

shayne said:

This seems to be a disturbingly common problem around the sonic fandom, I've seen it a lot in other communities I've been a part of. It's a fandom that attracts kids that happens to have a lot of adults sticking around from the olden days, which makes it a natural hunting ground for predators.

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They invade these communities like an alcoholic working in a bar. They know what they want and they know how to manipulate people into getting it.

I just want to say that I'm not throwing around any accusations, but it's getting to me how bizarre it is that this would be going on and nobody would be aware of it. I understand why SSNTails wouldn't have any clue since he was largely out of the picture with this stuff, but someone like Mystic who was so deeply involved with the community and was abusive to kids and inappropriate with them in his own right... It just doesn't add up.

Hi, I've honestly been only associating with Kart for the longest time since I was brought into it from Lythero streaming content related to it, and I was ecstatic seeing things like a playable E-102 Gamma and Chaos Zero in a kart racer, and they looked really nice! I've been with this community for a bit over 2 years now, and only tangentially hopped onto the MB otherwise. This leaves me rather divorced from the community still to this day, which I aim to rectify by playing through the SUGOI trilogy (beat SUGOI, on SUBARASHII now).

I do have things to discuss relevant to Mystic, despite being so far removed from the SRB2 vanilla community-chalk it up to him being so toxic he has a literal miasma that seeps into everything he's involved in, if you wanna be jokey. I remember when originally trying to register an account here that the they/them/their question was honestly really excessive, and the rule about grammar always rubbed me the wrong way, since I knew firsthand from relatives like my own mother how shitty that rule is for ESLs, much less formative youth. I'm surprised to learn that this was basically a Mystic thing, and that he needlessly pruned people from this community because he couldn't tolerate so much as just having to put a mental [sic] on a post. The main thing I remember him for, was his extreme tirade against slopes, as seen here: https://mb.srb2.org/showpost.php?p=338495&postcount=12

I know back then slopes were an impossibility, and hindsight is 20/20, but I always felt that was an extremely caustic take, considering how modifiable the DOOM engine is. It would only be a matter of time before some madlad coder came in with a big idea for SRB2, and made the impossible possible. It was a mentality like this, combined with the grammar zealotry that led me to staying as far away from the community as possible.

This also puts a lot into perspective, like how fickle's maps for SRB2Kart all feature extensive sloping, every single one of them with physics involved even if it wouldn't necessarily be super useful. In a way, the post I linked feels like a microcosm of all the reprehensible things he's done, on top of the needless anger towards anyone with imperfect American English.

Now that the Old Guard is gone (which I'm honestly shocked by, I'm used to toxic authorities staying in power for all eternity and for marginalized folks to steer the fuck clear and consign themselves to huddling amongst each other for warmth), I think I genuinely want to get further involved in this community. It will probably be years before I get to modding for vanilla content since I'm currently making SRB2Kart maps, but I'm very excited for the future! I've felt a lot of empathy seeing everyone post here, and it makes me genuinely want to plant my roots down here and in Kart to keep these two games alive and breathing for as long as possible. I may be new to the forums, but I'll try my best to get involved to the best extent my introverted self can.

One of the most useless and outright disgusting threads ever made on this forum. My god, it is really necessary to discuss all of this stuff here? I downloaded the whole thread for future reference, and I don't care if I'm banned from here, I'll be playing the game anyway since it's good. I don't give a shit.

It's been repeated multiple times why it's healthy to talk about this publicly and to not just sweep it under the rug and pretend nothing happened.

Responses like yours with no substance or actual criticism only serve to drag out a thread you apparently hate so much even longer.

You can feel absolutely free to download the entire thread, as this thread won't be taken down anyway.

You joined at the end of 2016, and this is the first post you make here? You act like this discussion is unnecessary, completely throw everyone's grievences with this deplorable person out, and then... decide to personally archive the entire thing?? And then tell us you don't care? About the thing you're archiving??

Yes, it absolutely is necessary to discuss all of this stuff here. This stuff applied to many people across the entire community, some for an entire decade, the only exception being completely new-joiners who were lucky enough to miss it.

It's possible you lack context, and in that situation something like this might seem pretty wild at first -- but with context, it's entirely the appropriate conversation to have, however unusual and tense it might seem.

What you're mistaking as problematic is actually an opportunity for the community to grow through acknowledging stuff that happened to us in the past, stuff some of us even participated in in the past, level with each other about how we feel now, and resolve to do better and be more pro-active.

Some venting of frustration is fine, too, but if you read the whole thread you can see that people have been pretty good at clapping any of the immature (mostly witch-hunty) takes that have came up here. This, too, is also good. That which we talk about openly we can also set proper standards for each other on as a community.

You joined at the end of 2016, and this is the first post you make here?

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2016 is plenty of time to have valid perspective (even if I think they were missing context or hadn't thought it through.) People with much more recent join dates have also made valuable posts. IDK what weight there is in pointing this out, d00d :V

Charybdizs said:

2016 is plenty of time to have valid perspective (even if I think they were missing context or hadn't thought it through.) People with much more recent join dates have also made valuable posts. IDK what weight there is in pointing this out, d00d :V

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The point was more that it looks weird that this is the first post on that account.

Charybdizs said:

2016 is plenty of time to have valid perspective (even if I think they were missing context or hadn't thought it through.) People with much more recent join dates have also made valuable posts. IDK what weight there is in pointing this out, d00d :V

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I think it's more that they've been lurking for four years, and decided that this was how they were going to introduce themselves.

Charyb's point is that what he posted is what deserves the criticism, not when/how his account was used. Frankly it's really silly that everyone's grappling onto a join date, which is actually the most reasonable part of the post :V

Laziness said:

One of the most useless and outright disgusting threads ever made on this forum. My god, it is really necessary to discuss all of this stuff here? I downloaded the whole thread for future reference, and I don't care if I'm banned from here, I'll be playing the game anyway since it's good. I don't give a shit.

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I don't think you could get banned for saying something like this.
I think it was really necessary to discuss all of it in here, it made all the sense to me.

I've been lurking the board since 2009, and made an account in 2016. I don't feel like re-reading the whole thread to point-out all of its flaws, but this wasn't the best way to achieve the goal you people wanted.

Even if you wanted to not name examples or just stay stupidly vague, you could at least elaborate even just the tiniest bit instead of throwing out a garbage nothing post that boiled down to "this thread stinks :)".

I'll repeat, all your post did was drag out a thread that you clearly despise that was already on the road to cooling down. All you did is make yourself look like the unreasonable one here.

Laziness said:

I've been lurking the board since 2009, and made an account in 2016. I don't feel like re-reading the whole thread to point-out all of its flaws, but this wasn't the best way to achieve the goal you people wanted.

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There's nothing more I can say to you that won't devolve into flaming so I'll keep it brief. Miss me with this "callout culture" shit. Sometimes a community goes through shared trauma and needs to grieve. Better to have a thread for it and keep it out of other discussions. You clearly don't know what you're talking about, so either lurk moar or mind your own business.

Saying you've downloaded the entire thread in a way that implies you'd use it against us isn't the best way to achieve your goals either.


The whole point of this thread, if you'd actually read some of it, was to finally air our grievances and problems we've had with mystic and to finally get some weight off of our shoulders, backs, and necks.

On the topic of context regarding the topic of discussion here, there may be some who don't quite grasp how harmful Mystic was to this community in general. I've talked about my experiences with him in the past, but I will elaborate on it again in an attempt to convey my viewpoint and experiences on the matter for those who lack the proper context to the situation. Do note however that I have never been a part of the Discord server, so I will not be covering anything he did there, as it falls outside of my experience and as such is not my place to speak on. Note also that this post will be long. I'm not going to condense things down much in this post. I will not give a TL;DR at the end, as I feel it is important for the sake of proper context that my experiences not be watered down and simplified.

I first joined this community as a young teenager well over a decade ago. I was enthusiastic about the game, and thought it might be fun to join the community. Some of my posts from back then are probably pretty cringe, I would rather not go back and dig through them myself, but one thing I know for sure about them was that the spelling and grammar were... Less than perfect in my posts.

Although this was (and is) a forum naturally inclined to attract younger users, and as such users not yet well versed in proper usage of the English language in written form, my spelling and grammar at the time would become the main problem point with my relationship with the administration here at the time. More accurately, Mystic. At the time, I was unable to differentiate between the different admins/mods active at the time. I didn't know them as people. As such, the actions of Mystic were seen by me as the unanimous actions of the administration here in general. When he gave me a temp ban (Maybe even two, it's been a while so I have a hard time remembering) on account of my spelling and grammar, it left a strong emotional impact on me. I felt threatened with eventual exile from the community over something that I viewed as a petty, toxic policy against anything less than perfect written English. Rather than allow my account to face a permanent ban over it, I left the community of my own accord. I saved my account information where I wouldn't lose it just in case, and off I went.

Some time later, I decided to dip my toes back in the water and find if it still stung. My spelling and grammar had improved, so I logged in again and replied to a topic. Once again, Mystic showed his petty intolerance for less than perfect grammar. This time, in addition to me getting an infraction he sent me PM warning me not to do it again. I took the hint, and disappeared for a decade.

For years I warned friends of mine with imperfect grammar not to join the MB here on account of the administrations toxic intolerance of spelling and grammar mistakes. Much likely happened here in that time, but I had no idea what because I no longer considered myself a part of the community and no longer desired to keep up with the goings on here. Mystic had singlehandedly soured my perspective of the administration as a whole here and driven me away.

I never expected to return, but then SRB2 2.2 dropped. By now, I had long since graduated high school and moved on with my life. My spelling and grammar had much improved, and the update blew me away with how impressive it was. I thought to myself that perhaps it was time to give the MB another shot. Perhaps the place had changed for the better? Well, the place certainly had changed. No longer was I receiving infractions on my posts for spelling and grammar, nor receiving PM's warning me about it. I was making fewer mistakes, so I was unsure entirely if the problems regarding that had gone away. However, Mystic was very much still here, and his viewpoint on things and mine were anything but the same.

In several different threads over the course of months, my viewpoint and his clashed on occasion. I began to realize by paying closer attention this time around that Mystic was... Different from most of the rest of the mods and admins. I didn't see much of a problem with anyone else, but he in particular had a tendency of being much less reasonable. Specifically, while I no longer need fear infractions for spelling and grammar, he displayed a general lack of transparency, a lack of respect for the community, and a tendency of being unable to take criticism and to throw around accusations. In one topic in particular, he locked the topic with a "screw you, I'm right, you're wrong" post while simultaneously accusing me of being contrarian just for the sake of it. This would ultimately end up being my final interaction with him. A rather sour note to end things on. I also witnessed during my time here him lacking tolerance for people expressing their viewpoints on subjects related to topics he had locked. It was as if his final word was law, and everyone was mandated by him to get in line.

Fun fact about my PC at the time: It was the very same PC I was using when I joined this community over a decade ago. It was old. Really old. Originally built back around 2005 or 2006. I experienced some rather unfortunate hard drive failures including my C drive. I figured it was about time I build a brand new PC, so for some time I didn't have a PC while I saved up in preparation of my upgrade.

Eventually I finally had my new PC built, and I decided to pop back in here to see what I had missed in the months I was gone. It was then that I saw this thread, and realized what had happened. Let me be clear about something: I was never a fan of the way he handled things, but I did respect him in regards to his stubborn insistence to stick to his guns and defend his point of view. If he had been more reasonable, he may very well have been the admin I respected the most on account of his backbone. However, he was not. Seeing the topic and reading people's perspectives that they previously didn't have the courage to speak up about when he was around made me realize that I wasn't the only one who had similar issues with him. Mystic was a problem here on the MB that had driven a great many people away with his toxic, borderline authoritarian way of handling things and treating the community.

This topic therefore stands as a monument. This community needs to never forget what happened, and never repeat his mistakes. I do not see this as a toxic topic for bashing Mystic. I see it as an outlet for people to share their experiences regarding him, and convey the harm he caused to this community. I see it as a way for those who were not affected by what he did to see others testimonies on it and understand what he did wrong, and why it was wrong. This topic is a chance for the community to heal and grow. A chance to move on in a positive way, rather than to just bury what happened and let it fester.

The main problem of this thread is the enormous amount of demonization towards a human being (and some other ones, but I'll center on Mystic) who made mistakes. I understand the idea was to try to understand what was wrong on Mystic's (and various other persons) behavior, but (for the most part) the only thing that can be seen along the whole thread is "how much shit of a person he is", "how much this person fucked up my life", "how it was a good riddance", and this only leaves a mark on his public persona for everyone to hate him from now on. Dude, he's a fucking flawed person, just like any of us, it wasn't necessary to talk shit about him, or show stuff like chat logs of him talking about loli stuff, or his private (I think they were private) conversations with Spazzo. Also, I almost didn't read something good about him here, for example, that he deeply cared about this game (read the publication he made on the news page about the 20th anniversary of the game, just to exemplify). Besides, this stuff doesn't concern to 100% of the community, like me for example. Why would I want to know how Mystic bullied you? But here I am, reading all of this (well, I did it like a month ago or so and casually revisited it today). This personal stuff should have been tackled in private between yourselves. This thread, as for now, is mostly an excuse to publicly hate over a person, when it should have been an actual analysis on his flaws as an Admin and Game Designer without going into personal matter or trash-talking (like, for example, saying that having a hidden subcategory here for posting hentai makes him a disgusting person. That's unnecessary, just say that it was a really bad move and something that shouldn't have been made). In my first message, I said this thread is disgusting as hell, but I didn't say any of you were bad people.

And no, I didn't download this thread to use it against yourselves, it was, as I said, for future reference. I don't mean to do harm to any of you.

Well, it's hard for me to convey something more cohesive right now since I'm dying of sleep deprivation and cold, I'm not a native English speaker and also I don't care that much about this stuff. But if I somehow come back to this, I'll try to deliver something with more substance.

To be honest I agree with the points Laziness is making. Not much has come out of this thread other than "ahhh remember when mystic did soandso that really sucked im so glad hes gone" or "the game will be so much better now that the old guard is gone". Like, this thread is titled"Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad" but I'm not seeing much good in here.

PencilVoid said:

this thread is titled"Mystic removal discussion - The good and the bad" but I'm not seeing much good in here.

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The good comes from our ability to learn from what Mystic did and not repeat the same mistakes he made. It's true you aren't going to see a lot of praise for him in this thread, but that's more of a testament to how his actions caused people to feel about him than anything like this just being a big hate thread.

Being able to discuss this openly like this is far more healthy than keeping such feelings bottled up. Bottled up emotions eventually lead to outbursts, which can easily become much, much more toxic and lead to more division than the conversations that help avoid said outbursts. If the community is to be able to move on from what happened in a positive way, what happened and how it made us all feel isn't something that should be just buried and ignored.

Laziness said:

Dude, he's a fucking flawed person, just like any of us, it wasn't necessary to talk shit about him, or show stuff like chat logs of him talking about loli stuff, or his private (I think they were private) conversations with Spazzo...

...Besides, this stuff doesn't concern to 100% of the community, like me for example. Why would I want to know how Mystic bullied you? But here I am, reading all of this (well, I did it like a month ago or so and casually revisited it today). This personal stuff should have been tackled in private between yourselves.

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You pretty much confirmed it: You really don't know what you're talking about here. This is an individual who did a lot of harm to a massive chunk of people here. If it doesn't concern you, that's okay, not everything on the forum is made to cater to topics relevant to you. Let me throw a number out there: This is something that has highly affected hundreds of people. That's not hyperbole. The SRB2 community is big and a lot of people grew up here.

You're making an error in the vein of "lawful good" -- you're uncomfortable with the way these things that normally would have been hidden behind closed doors in the name of "keeping the peace" are being handled openly.

The reason we choose to do this in the open is because so many people who have been a part of this community deserve to know the details. It's simple: For all the many people who have been affected by this, they also deserve the closure and the affirmation, as abuse victims.

when it should have been an actual analysis on his flaws as an Admin and Game Designer without going into personal matter or trash-talking (like, for example, saying that having a hidden subcategory here for posting hentai makes him a disgusting person.

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These ARE his flaws as an administrator of a community that attracts young children by its very design. And yes, knowingly sharing porn with minors does, in fact, make you a disgusting person. Of all things, that's the least debatable -- it could literally land you in jail.

I'm going to step in now and say this: This thread of conversation needs to end now. You think you're presenting something important, but in reality all you're doing is a disrespect to a whole host of bullying and abuse victims. So that's enough of it, okay? Consider this a warning.

PencilVoid said:

To be honest I agree with the points Laziness is making. Not much has come out of this thread other than...

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You simply aren't looking hard enough, then. Many people have already expressed throughout this thread that it helped them open their eyes to see problems in the community they hadn't been aware of!
(See: MonsterIestyn's post, a post by someone who had routinely been in denial of how much harm Mystic had done, and had a change of heart when he began seeing everyone's testimony come out.)

Many people have also expressed feelings of validation for the abuse they underwent, an important step in healing and moving on.

Even those two things are very considerable, aside from what Time Gear said, which is, in many ways, the crux of the matter.

A response to laziness.

There are some people who are willing to discuss about his behavior. Some aren't because they do not want to look back to the past what he and his friends did and that could be anything; celebrating his ban or not caring whether or not he is gone.

When I heard Mystic was banned for the first time, from a friend who sent me this topic, I was impressed. I thought SRB2 will be a mess when he is still around and kids might exhibit the same ego he has. I also leave a post on here how I suffered from trauma back in the days, (you are welcome to read this yourself), but I managed to get rid of that suffering at the age of 16. That was right after I got recently banned on Mibbit too, and too focused on school.

... Anyway, i wish I can write you more but I will keep this short. The last thing I want to say is, you don't have to care about how others feel about Mystic. But respect should always be due regardless on both sides of minds.