Any Guilty Pleasures Refugees?

[FarFetched]

Hey all,

It looks like the Guilty Pleasure Roleplaying Forum ended without warning today. Maybe an admin shut it down? Not sure. Either way, I lost a couple months of work and I am just a little mad about it! >:(

Only thing to do now though is pick up the pieces. Anyone else here from that site?

[Chaelrishe]

Oh, Jesus. I hung out there for about a year before discovering Elliquiy. I only really had one meaningfully long-term roleplay there, and it ended abruptly a couple of years ago. Still, my heart goes out to those who have lost writing there. :<

Is there any information out there about what happened? What was the issue?

[NinjaNinja2013]

It was like the only RP site where I could find people to RP without a problem. =(

[Gypsy]

I was on there a bit. 

I seem to recall that this is (at least) the second such melt-down.  Last time, they brought the site back up after a bit, but I wasn't really paying attention at the time.   

I had one completed story there that I wish I had saved.  With any luck, they'll bring it back at least long enough for people to rescue writing and exchange contact information.

[Banane]

Hola! I can weigh in on what's up, though I cannot give you specifics as to why: I used to be a member of Guilty Pleasures Roleplaying (GP) from December 2016 to August 2017.

Evidently, that seems strange; how would somebody who quit the site on August 2017 know what's going on?

Well, I quit the site because the owner of GP (known as Lace) is batshit crazy.

Over the years as owner of GP, she antagonized the staff on her site often. Behind the scenes in the staff, animosity brewed, unseen by the general populace of GP. Finally, on August 2017 most of the site admins decided to make their own site called Black Dahlia Roleplaying (BDR). They secretly invited some of their friends to join the site. I happened to be a friend of a friend, so I was invited to the site too.

Now, the admins that created the offshoot site intended to leave quietly... until, unfortunately, somebody informed the admins that had been excluded from the creation of BDR to its existence. The uninformed admins included — as one would expect — Lace.

Now, what would you do if you found out your admins (who are also your friends) were doing something behind your back? Resolve the conflict peacefully? Speak to the BDR creators and understand why they made a new site? Do something to understand what's going on? Act like a reasonable adult and step back to see the big picture?

For Lace, none of the above. Lace just banned all of the admins in a spontaneously horrific fashion and let the site blow up into flames.

Now, logically, one might expect that after such a sudden upheaval of staff that the head of everything would release a statement to explain what was going on.

Of course, Lace does not have logic. Instead, she went AWOL and left remaining staff members scurrying about like headless chickens. Hilarious actions by the staff include:

• They tried to hack BDR. This was claimed to be the rogue actions of a single staff member
• Remaining staff and admins against the site attempted to join BDR

It took several days before someone finally announced to the populace what had gone down, with an absurd vagueness. The person who made the announcement neither mentioned any details of what had happened, attempted to gloss over the incident as if it wasn't particularly important, and also wasn't even an actual staff member. They were a "Welcoming Committee" member that had only been in the "Welcoming Committee" for a period of less than a month. The only sort of duty they had was welcoming people to GP with a friendly message. None of the moderators or remaining admins had said anything publicly up to that point.

As one would expect, members of GP began to ask questions, demanding answers as to what had transpired. When moderators finally stepped into the thread and tried to explain themselves, they found themselves unable to answer the questions of frustrated GP members. As members began to ask some scalding questions, moderators began to remove these members' replies and eventually they locked the announcement thread.

Now, the insanity did not start there, no. No, they started to bunk down on a rather dumb rule that the site had: "no poaching." That is, all members of the site could not elicit roleplaying activity on a third-party service to GP. If a member were to meet somebody on GP, they would have to roleplay exclusively on GP with them; they were not allowed to ask their new-found partner to roleplay with them through e-mail, Skype, Discord or other services. Otherwise, both parties might be banned.

Sometime after BDR was created, the first "poaching"  bans began to occur. Site members started to get banned for being a member of BDR or asking people to come to BDR.

A number of people were banned when it became apparent that they were on BDR. Some had the same screen handle on GP.

Several were banned for asking their friends to come to BDR. However... this was considerably disturbing. Some ex-members who were banned for "poaching" members (by GP's definition of poaching) claimed they had done so in private message space to friends they trusted. This private message space was on GP and was accessible by GP staff, suggesting that an admin or moderator had gone through their private messages on GP and banned them for things they had posted in confidence.

Some people (who didn't "poach") were also asked if they were poachers when they mentioned BDR conversationally.

Many people were not even "banned", per se. Rather, upon trying to log in to their Guilty Pleasures Roleplaying account, they were redirected to a seizure-inducing website called staggeringbeauty.com.

Lace eventually handed off site ownership to a woman (known as Whisper) for some time. Whisper was somewhat better than Lace, although it became apparent quickly that being better than Lace was a low standard of comparison; Whisper wasn't particular equipped for taking care of the site. Eventually, Whisper stepped down and returned ownership to Lace. Did she change?

Not at all! She went right back to antagonizing staff. What made it somewhat worse this time around was that she started some convoluted love square between her and three males on staff.

Eventually, the squabbling reached its climax and Lace shut down GP! Members were left baffled as to what happened. Just like what happened with BDR, old staff members from GP made a new site: Radiant Phantasia Roleplaying.


... then GP came back.


That is the story of the first time GP got shut down in recent years. Currently, we are on the second time. I have no idea what led up to this second time.

... Though, the answer is apparent: Lace is crazy.

[FarFetched]

Sounds like quite something. E is much less... all that, to be certain.

As far as I know this time, some things were happening with some of the staff doing bad stuff? Stealing info, doxxing GP, and making fake GP facebook pages. The latter had posts called her a tyrant and posted images of her with... admittedly really shoddy edits equating her to satan.

All said and done, I don't have a clear picture, and I am not nearly familiar enough GP's staff form a strong opinion on it.

[Gypsy]

All I know is that the message that's up on the site now is ... rather sad, and not a way that I, personally, would want to be remembered.

I'm also a member of BDR, though I haven't done much there.   What I can say is that the friendliness of those that run the site, in my experience, is worlds above what I ever experienced on GP, but I prefer Elliquiy all the same.

Banane's account of what happened during the first GP shutdown is pretty much what I remember, though I'd already finished my one story there and only peeked in during the tail end of it.  I remember the thread 'explaining' what had happened and people complaining that their posts had been removed.  I remember Whisper taking over for a short time, though I was aware that it didn't last. 

It's sad for all the people who had made friends there.  I hope they find their way to new, and more stable, roleplaying homes.

[Blythe]

Let's try to keep the crossforum drama down, folks. I know people are hurting and upset at the loss of a RP site, but posts talking about how 'crazy' the admin is there (not a nice word to throw around, though I know people are frustrated) just doesn't bring anything positive to this community. Let's keep speculation down and instead...let's think on the positive. For those coming to us from Guilty Pleasures who are interested in reconnecting with other GP users here, I would like to bid you welcome to our fine little site here. :)

If you have recently arrived and are not currently an approved member, please consider completing our application process.

If you complete the app process, you'll gain access to places to share things like your Discord via our Private Message system (or we would allow a thread in our members only On Topic area for that purpose). Elliquiy is quite stable, so if any folks are looking for somewhere stable to RP, this is a nice place to do so.

Thank you.  8-)

[Esoterica]

Without getting in any drama (there has been more than enough of this since this site came down) I would like to just mention I was on GP as well, but I don't know if its ok to give out my old information in hopes of reconnecting with old friends or not.

[Bells of Nevermore]

Unfortunately, BDR also has some problems. I have a site of my own, which I have been circumspect in even naming while here, because I don't want to ever make people think I am just here to beef up my numbers. I initially wanted to link my site to BDR and approached the owner to that end. In the first message, I was immediately accused of poaching, despite that my site has a very different focus than BDR. Also, they seem to be enabling at least one person who demonstrates a trend of sexualy harassing female members. I don't want to dump that whole drama rainbarrel into this thread, but these are the facts. It was pretty disappointing.

I am so glad I found E! There's just not that kind of dysfunction here because of the vigilance of a very good staff.