Razznet + Commissions + Just for Faun

So this is the story of what happened on Friday and why I left SpyroForum.

I've been a member of SpyroForum for a long time, over a year, maybe two years or more by my recollection. It had always seemed like a decent and fair place with a good group of members. I counted the site's creator and admin a friend and even stood up for him when people complained about him; he seemed like he was under appreciated and I had a hard time believing all the nasty things people said about him. Oh, if only I had known.

Well, jump to Friday. As you all know, my week hadn't been going well. I was under a massive amount of stress and not really able to be as friendly as I ought. A very minor argument in a thread I started prompted one of the mods whom I've never quite seen eye to eye with to move it to the trash. Alas, that was all it took. This hadn't been the first time something like that had happened and it probably wasn't going to be the last. I decided to at least try to take a break from the boards for a while.

Upon letting people know that I was taking a break, another mod's lackey posted, essentially, "Good! Finally, you're leaving!" Being of weak courage, this same user also took that moment to go to my art thread and make a vicious post there since I was going to be gone and he figured there would be no consequences. Upon seeing that, I came to discover that at least three users, one of them a mod, had decided to start talking crap about me. There was apparently an entire "let's hate on Razz" movement going on that I had, until Friday, not been aware of.

This hate movement seemed to be based around me not doing any work as a mod (and, likely, a fair amount of jealousy since I'm actually going places with my art), despite me announcing to the forums several times that I would not be able to do much because of work, life, and medical issues. I did what I could (and I'll note that I never saw any of them cleaning up the boards I frequented the most and did the cleaning out on myself). It is also common forum knowledge that I did not ask or want to be a mod, it was just a status that was put upon me by surprise. I took the job seriously and tried to do my best by it.

So, once I had decided that I'd had enough and was going to leave, an entire chunk of the forums rallied against me. And what did the admin whom I had defended, trusted, called a friend and even helped ostorder=asc&highlight=fund+raiser&start=0"raise money to keep his forum going do? Nothing.

He made one of the users who had insulted me remove his post. That's it. He didn't revoke the status of the mod who had been inciting members against me or try to do anything to help resolve these issues. The three members who actively bash me in the live chat and in the boards have not received any consequences for their actions. And when I asked him about all of this, said admin went off the handle and blamed me for everything that had happened, claiming I had insulted his forum (still don't know where that came from).

When under pressure I have a very short fuse and I did not act in a mature or kind way on Friday. I did make a public apology to the forums as a whole for my behavior. However, the way I have been treated by the admin, the mods and the members is not justified in any way. I would honestly encourage most of you to back out of these forums. This is not the first time something like this has happened there and I'm certain it won't be the last.

However, there is one final thing I would like to do, a last farewell/sendoff of sorts. I raised a little over $70 to help this apparently terrible forum stay afloat. I doubt I'll get that money back, and I know I'll never get back the time I wasted doing art for the fund raiser, but I'd like to one-up it.

A dear friend and personal hero of mine, ~PaintedWolfess, has been there for me and all of her friends no matter what is going on in her life. I would like to raise at least $80 to be donated to a charity of her choosing. It took about two weeks to get the money for the forum, so my goal is to raise this amount or more in two weeks or less.

All donations of $5 or more will receive a "thank you" pen sketch. Donations of $20 or more can get their sketch colored if they so choose. Donations of $50 or more can request line art of specific characters.

When you make your donation, please be sure to mention in a note that it is for Louve. Also, name your favorite character from any fandom that we have in common or from any of my personal projects and give me a noun or verb and an adjective. I will draw the first thing that comes to mind. At this time, I can only take PayPal, so please send any donations to confiscatedretina(AT)gmail(DOT)com

I will be at Furry Weekend Atlanta starting on Wednesday and will not be back until this Monday, so there will be a slight delay in the completion of sketches for donations made while I'm away.

Thank you all for putting up with me this past week and for any donations toward whichever charity Louve wishes to support.

Here's a tally of the donations so far (and a list of the donators' words for my own memory; those of you who have donated can give me your words here or via e-mail; if you don't specify any by the time I sit down to draw up the sketches, I'll just make a guess at what I hope you'll like).

Current Donations
draegwolf: $5 (unspecified)
meisterli: $25 (Elora, giant, car)
BaseHedgehog: $5 (unspecified)
Jared: $10 (unspecified)
CaptainQ: $40 (wants to donate his slot to whoever wants it)

Holy cow. You guys are amazing. In less than an hour you've already surpassed the goal. o.o I'm going to leave the charity going for the next two weeks, though, since it is for charity. But thank you guys so much. You're all incredible.

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