Kec doodles

On Mike’s dismissal

I’d like to explain a few things I’ve felt in the past months. Normally I don’t post about personal things between me and others because 1) they’re often no one else’s business and 2) I like to keep things personal.

However, this time, it’s necessary to talk about the fact that Mike has been removed from PMD-e’s administration and the facts of what’s happened to lead this to be the case. It’s quite long! Over 4800 words.

I would like to start with late November, where my trip to Japan was fast approaching and I needed to finish the Mission 7 epilogue. I was uninspired and not very happy with the prospect of being away from the Internet, holing myself in a corner to work on an Even Bigger Epilogue for days and days and days. 8 hours of work and I’d have something like 18-20 comic pages sketched. That’s around 2-3 big pages of comic like you’ve seen before, if you’ve followed PMD-e stuff. I had a LOT of story to tell, and it was unfortunately looking like it would be bigger than the whole Mission 5 ending thing!

Where is this going and how does this relate? Well, I was stalling. I was putting off working on it because I got distressed and the thought didn’t seem fun anymore. It felt very isolated.

And then, around that time, my friend Meli said that she would be happy to have me work for her and maybe move over to France to work for her, as well. That was absolutely exciting news, and as most of you are aware, I just got back from my France visit a week ago or so. I was really happy about it! I told Vee and Marl about it and they seemed excited too. It wasn’t a definite thing (still isn’t) but it was a really neat possibility and it was exciting.

I told Mike about it thinking he would be interested and happy for me. Instead, he got really upset, said a bunch of things to guilt me over it, tried to make me feel bad that we “wouldn’t get to meet” despite the fact that plane tickets from near him to here are cheaper than the Wii U he’d just bought, and generally said a bunch to make me feel really bad about what I thought was a cool opportunity. It wasn’t just said to me, either: it was said to other people we both knew that he didn’t want me to move, despite it having little effect on him personally.

It took me a couple of days to process this because I did not at all anticipate that sort of reaction. I was dumbfounded and then depressed because I just did not know how to handle that sort of thing. And then when I told him how upset/angry it made me after I figured out how I felt about what he had said, he got angry at me and told me I was wrong for not telling him immediately, and that I was wrong to say things that made him upset… so essentially, he didn’t want me to make him feel bad over telling him that what he did made me feel bad. Hold on, because this will be relevant later, too.

So that was upsetting. I spent several days upset over his reaction, and in that time, my precious M7 epilogue time was drawing closer and closer. I knew I wanted past Tao to be really awesome… and I was running out of time. There was not enough time left for a comic AND all of the other things I needed to finish before we left to Japan, like the new event and such.

I considered just quitting, since I thought I had lost the support of one of the original people to support me in this large group endeavor. It was extremely mentally taxing and disturbing, but I hid it from everyone in the IRC and from most of my friends because I felt like I should just bear it and not talk about it for fear I’d look like I was attention whoring or whatever. I knew that I would make a decision, but I didn’t want it to be after receiving a bunch of asspats. I wanted to feel support without groping for it.

And during this time, Riiko’s dad had committed suicide, which was even worse. I had these infinitely petty problems going on compared to him, and he still took the time to tell me he didn’t want the group to end and that he still had ideas and wanted to see it keep going. That’s probably the only reason I kept going. Despite everything that happened, he still had encouraging words to say to me, and that made me feel rather foolish. So I decided to give it my all, even though I was still not really talking to Mike.

Somewhere along the line he apologized, but I wasn’t really over it, because it felt like a betrayal of trust. In the meantime, I had been working on a Flash (the one that came out!) because Marl suggested I try that instead of a comic. The moment he said so, I went and approached Ryytikki about it who agreed to help. I’m grateful for that, as it’s allowed me to get closer to many people, including Ryy and Pengo and countless others who now help with the current Flashes.

Anyway… so I barely finished the Flash on time with help from Meli and others, and Ryy assembled it on time, and the Event came out on time. Barely. I had to chop some scenes and dialog and stuff, particularly the Mike evolution bit, mostly for time but also because writing that stuff was hard to get into when I was still really upset over what he had done. In the meantime, he proceeded to make it look like I treated him like shit to several people we both know. And of course, I didn’t really say much because I felt it was personal business, so I had only told a few very close friends about how he made me feel. So I got to look like a bad guy for being upset at how he acted toward me - because I “yelled” at him for being so selfish and mean to me. I got to look like a villain because I was sticking up for myself and telling him that type of behavior wasn’t okay.

Obviously, that didn’t stick well with me, but I just ignored it and kept going and didn’t make a post like this because I didn’t want to show off his dickish actions publicly when I thought I could resolve them myself, even if it made me look shitty to several people I knew. I just bore it.

Over Christmas, when I was in Japan, Mike made a couple of posts about wanting art from people, “crack pairings,” and included a little message about how he didn’t have a good Christmas and how what he wanted was art from others. And also another message clarifying that he was serious, that yes, he did want Christmas art. So, yeah, he was abusing his position of administrator in order to get art from others, guilting in the process so that people would feel like it would be a nice gesture to do for him.

A similar situation happened some 6 months prior when he had Ouroporos (you probably recognize him as “Numa”) illustrate his story that 1) I said no to and 2) did not want part of the canon of the world. Mike ignored me and ended up using Numa to get art for his story which existed for self-insertion and fetish reasons, and wasn’t something I wanted a part of the Wiki or really a part of the main story. It had no relation. Despite me telling him no, he did it anyway. Let me clarify: I didn’t say no just to be mean. I said no because it had no relation, there was no reason for Kairi to exist, and we already had a Dragonite. Furthermore, Syrup isn’t and won’t be important to the main story, nor was she. She’s a fun side character, but that’s it. The story had no importance and Numa’s time could have been better spent on a story that actually mattered, and that’s how I saw it. I was very tired of all of Mike’s ideas ending with some fetishistic idea and not actually mattering to the main story! It was very self-absorbed, to me, and only served to make others illustrate his little fantasies for free under the guise of being relevant, which was really, really upsetting to me.

Now that that’s been explained, we can get to recent times, such as his Tumblr post - the one he made before admitting it was all lies or half of the truth. Even though he admitted that, I feel it’s important to address each of the points and the context.

I’d like to mention beforehand that he sent me a bunch of messages insisting something was wrong, and when I insisted that nothing was wrong, he got really upset. I wanted to go to bed (it was 1am and I’ve been trying to keep a schedule), and then he acted as if I was trying to avoid “dealing” with it, when in my mind *there was nothing to deal with!* I’ve been in bad friendships like this before where a delusional person will cause me to stay up way past when I want to sleep, so I bailed early.

Then I woke up to find the tumblr post.

“I am going to take a break from PMDe. Everything hurts on an emotional level concerning PMDe. I try to do work, I’m not thanked for it. I try to help out things on the Wiki when I needed PK’s assistance, she gets upset at me and tells me that I bothered her for stupid reasons. Marl just talks shit about me behind my back in a channel of his own. I’ve been ordered to not write anything in regards to my characters and the PMDe canonity. Yes, even Mike. I’m not allowed to write for Mike now.

I cannot take this amount of disrespect, so I have done the amount of work I’m best with in PMDe and putting myself away for a while.

I love the community, and they have done nothing wrong, but I feel like I’m not getting the respect from PK or Marl or any of the major PMDe admins, and I cannot handle this at all.

I will come back to work if I am talked to and have this all sorted out, because… ugh. I hope that this doesn’t escalate to my dismissal.”

Let’s start from the beginning.

“I try to do work, I’m not thanked for it.”

This is a lie. I thank him all the time. What happened on that particular day was that I was streaming: it started with me illustrating the Kecleon family because that was a fun start to my day, and then I moved on to working on the Eeveelution print for Sakuracon. I hardly need to justify myself for being busy that day. We talked about it briefly in IRC, the Kecleons, and that was it. He told me he got some sorting work done and then got really upset that I did not say anything about it… when I was streaming.

Furthermore, the work he does is work he volunteered to do. He gets more thanks than many of my other helpers who are very happy to do their job just to help with the group. I’m always thankful for that, and I’ve said multiple times to Mike before “this group wouldn’t have existed without you, thank you for doing that stuff,” because I sure as hell don’t want to do it. I can’t stress enough that I’ve personally thanked people for the work they do because it’s impossible for me to do myself, and I know I’ve also done it publicly. It was a flat lie and it really hurt/agitated me that he could ever think to say those words, especially with the intention to tarnish my and the group’s reputation. It was really enraging.

“I try to help out things on the Wiki when I needed PK’s assistance, she gets upset at me and tells me that I bothered her for stupid reasons.”

Let me clarify that there are several Wiki helpers, and one of them before (maybe more than one, I’m not sure) has helped with the particular task he was asking of me… which was natures/traits for non-essential NPCs like Vince and Mulberry. Ones that didn’t really matter. Then, let me throw into the mix that he bugged me for this while I was at work in France. I said I was busy and said to ask someone else. He asked me again later and I was frustrated but just looked it up anyway - he kept acting… no, not even acting like, but outright saying I was being avoidant of doing the work. Let me remind everyone that this is while I was preparing the last bits so Mission 8 Part 4 could come out - I was at work or going to work or back to Meli’s for 11 hours in a day, then coming back and working hard to get more needed art done. I was getting like 6 or less hours of sleep in a night.. but by my choice, because I wanted to get things out on time. The last thing on my mind was NPCs that didn’t matter. Then I started taking voice auditions too and those took hours and hours to listen to. I was eating/breathing/sleeping PMD-e aside from work.

So whatever, I gave him the natures/traits so he would stop, despite the fact that he could do it himself easily and with no problems. The real thing that I snapped over is that he kept asking me for the Maple art from Part 4 and I was 1) in France and 2) don’t really like giving art to people if I didn’t make it for them. That’s my choice, I feel. Plus it’s a hassle. Plus I just didn’t feel like it. I shouldn’t have to justify myself there, either. What I really snapped over was him bugging me for that when he literally had no need for it, when I already have dozens of things I need to worry about at any one time. That’s why I said he was “bugging me for stupid reasons” - he could easily have asked other people for the Wiki help, and if he really wanted the Maple art he could have screencapped it. I’ve just been tremendously busy lately trying to get a lot of things done and I don’t need more tiny trivial crap clogging my mind or my train of thought.

Next…

“Marl just talks shit about me behind my back in a channel of his own.”

Another lie! Let me clearly and precisely explain what happened and how Mike translated it here.

Marl was asked by curious people about the Kairi thing, which I’ve taken the time to explain above. Marl had the courtesy to talk about his feelings of annoyance over the subject in another channel specifically made for explaining it to the curious - which Mike knows about already. Mike heard hearsay from an IRC user who felt Marl was being unfair in things he said - that is, until the IRC user heard more of the story from Marl, at which point he agreed with Marl. That’s the bit Mike didn’t get to hear about. It wasn’t talked about in front of Mike in the main channel because last time it was, Mike literally cried over it. Marl was explaining it elsewhere to avoid that. I’ll paste the exact words that Marl had said after it was all said and done:

<~Marl> mike himself is fine and has a bunch of good ideas and helps out a lot

<~Marl> he just does a lot of things that annoy me

So to be brief: Marl explained what happened with Kairi, why it annoyed him, and then included that thought there at the end. Mike heard Marl was “smack-talking” which was an error in communication, and the person changed their mind after Marl finished the story.

All that Mike based this part of his post on was someone saying Marl was “smack talking” - literal words. The person who told Mike did not actually say what Marl had said, so Mike based this on hearsay, turning it into “talks shit about me.”

Next.

“ I’ve been ordered to not write anything in regards to my characters and the PMDe canonity. Yes, even Mike. I’m not allowed to write for Mike now.”

This part made me absolutely furious for several reasons, not least of all it being a gigantic lie.

The biggest reason this made me upset was because the last time, literally the last time I talked to him about Mike, we were both working together on cool ideas for Mike in the upcoming epilogue. Both Mike and I.

He was partially right about this, and that I told him to stop writing Mike for a while. I’ll explain why right here: he continually came up with very bad story ideas. They were not relevant to the story I wanted to tell, and only served to further his own fantasies and fetishistic desires. I’ve no problem with people working their kinks into stories in interesting ways that are relevant, but otherwise? There is no place for that in a story like this which is meant to be inclusive to many people, a story which isn’t meant to be a big self-insert fanfiction. Things like Mike being the last dragon in a line of very special dragons created by a specific Pokemon, things like Mike and PK having a kid, things like Mike and Opal having kids, things like that. Things that just don’t really fit into this. Things like Mike becoming suicidal that his girlfriend of A WEEK IN-UNIVERSE has decided to leave because she was mistreated by Fresnel… things like that. Those are the ideas I was continually rejecting, and those are why I told him I was taking over writing Mike.

Now hold on before you think that’s too mean: if I said “no this idea doesn’t work,” he wouldn’t say “how can I make it work?” or “what about it won’t work, how can I make it better, what do I need to change?” - he would get very pouty, pissy, moany, and cry about it to our mutual friends (like Riiko), who would get upset at me for being mean to Mike. I often ignored that because I knew I was right in what I was doing.

I had Mike write the Mission 8 letter when the time came for that because I had no interest in taking away his ability to write things like that! I simply wanted to guide the story in the correct direction for the arc! So, after I told him he was not allowed to write for Mike unless he stopped being a baby and started collaborating and working with me on ideas again, I had him write the Mike letter. Let me summarize that: I had Mike write the letter after he was told he could not write for the main story. So he wrote for Mike.

Let me get back to the first thing I mentioned… and that he was collaborating on me with ideas for Mike 2 weeks ago when I was in France. We were working on some very cool ideas for some intense interactions with Mikemeleon and others. That is the last time that I talked to him about the subject of “Mike” the character.

Just to be clear, again: yes, Mike got to both write for and come up with ideas for Mikemeleon in the past 3 weeks. Which was after I had told him he couldn’t come up with ideas unless he stopped trying to do self-inserts about non-essential tangents like suggesting Opal and Mike have kids 3 different ways.

Next…

“I cannot take this amount of disrespect, so I have done the amount of work I’m best with in PMDe and putting myself away for a while.

I love the community, and they have done nothing wrong, but I feel like I’m not getting the respect from PK or Marl or any of the major PMDe admins, and I cannot handle this at all.”

This is really upsetting to read. Especially the “from PK or Marl or any of the major PMDe admins” - everyone has treated him fine, and there was no problem with anyone before this point, and among us now, there still is no problem with anyone except with Mike, for the aforementioned reasons.

“I will come back to work if I am talked to and have this all sorted out, because… ugh. I hope that this doesn’t escalate to my dismissal.”

I talked to him for 5 hours yesterday as calmly and as nicely as I could, and everything about it made me realize I’d been falling into a trap for months: I’d been trying to avoid mentioning any of the things he said or did that made me upset in the public eye or to many friends because I didn’t want to make him look bad or to make people dislike him, because… I knew he was often upset, and didn’t want to add to that. And besides, I didn’t think it was anyone else’s business. I hid things. How I felt, for instance.

Meanwhile, he cheerfully made me out like a monster to many, many people over the slightest thing, such as turning down an idea like “Mike should be the last special child of X” - crying that others had cool characters with cool roles, so why not he? Things like that. There are quite a few people who had been thinking I was abusing Mike for months now. Abusing! Because he would censor the truths of the situation, the truths of what I had said, why I had said it, to garner sympathy from others. It worked! Riiko believed it for a good long while, as well as some of the other admins, and especially those who disliked me for another reason to begin with. Anything to add to reasons to dislike me, right? It has to be true, an admin of PMD-e said it, right? Clearly PK is being a monster!

And then it occurred to me that this is the same behavior I had taken on when I was with an abusive boyfriend, something like 7 years ago. I cannot believe I had fallen into such a toxic friendship, where I was berated for talking about subjects I enjoyed instead of talking to Mike, and where he attempted to guilt me over people liking the work I did. These are the things he said to me during our conversation yesterday that particularly bothered me after he got upset that I did not thank him immediately for some trivial work he did in sorting Mission stuff, the day I had drawn the Kecleon family:

“Mike: Yet you’re free to talk about all your kecleons

Melanie: when do you thank me for me getting my work done?

Mike: and being adored

Melanie: oh right: I don’t expect fucking thanks for something I volunteered to do

are you, of all people, going to fault me for being happy people are into something I’m doing?

Mike: You show it, that when it happens you let yourself go to talk to people

I

Melanie: there is nothing wrong with that

Mike: I hate the fucking silence

Melanie: to fault me for it is really dispicable

Mike: Nothing really happened

between you and me

nothing

You’d rather talk to pengo

Melanie: so join in and talk in the channel then

Mike: or someone else

Melanie: or maybe I’d rather talk to someone who won’t make me feel bad for liking things I like

and who won’t be passive aggressive

and who will be a friend toward me

and who won’t expect things out of me all the time”

This sort of toxic behavior has been leaking through from him for months, but this is the first time I really addressed all of it. He would get incredibly jealous if I talked to another friend, get very possessive, become depressed, etc… and if people liked my characters or anything I did after I turned down one of his self-insertion ideas, he would go crazy too, and attempt to make me feel bad for people liking things I did. Such as the Kecleon thing you can see above! I’m too busy “being adored” to give him the thanks he ~deserves~ for doing the work I always thanked him for when I was busy preparing for a convention and a new story post in a couple of weeks.

It’s just infuriating.

I did not look for sympathy, nor did I look for help when I was upset over group things and what I felt was betrayal from Mike. Maybe that was my fault, and I should have talked to people for support. The fact is that I did not, because I thought it would make Mike look bad.

This is absurd. In normal circumstances about anyone else, I would post gladly about unreasonable things they did, and would tell them off for anything I found to be a breach of trust/friendship. Mike went out of his way to make me out to look bad to everyone over me telling him that what he did made me seriously upset and depressed. Meanwhile, he also made me look bad (and tried to guilt me over) how long it takes me to process my emotions. And… despite that, I still did not talk about this to people aside from my husband and boyfriend and one or two other close friends.

This mirrors the type of thing I would do when with my abusive ex. I would just take his verbal abuse, take the things he said - I would disagree most of the time, and then feel like I was crazy because he was clearly upset and wow I had to have done something wrong, so I would just say something to make him shut up. That’s eerily similar to what happened here with Mike.

It was a combination of gradual changes over many months, selfish behavior escalating into self-indulgence to be inflicted on the group in the form of a bad Mary Sue-esque character being inserted… Possessive, passive-aggressive behavior… making himself out to be the victim, me out to be the tormentor… and then me not really putting all of this out in the light. That was the big problem. I’m really upset that I didn’t make clear my feelings sooner. It takes me a while to realize what I’m feeling sometimes, but right now I’m mostly angry.

Angry that a supposed friend would do all of these things and then still expect *me* to apologize – which he did expect, let me say. That’s the last thing my abusive ex expected, too. He never got one. Nor will Mike.

Anyway, Mike’s not going to be a helper again, nor will he be able to be in any position of power or influence over the story. I cannot deal with someone who betrayed my trust and did something so rash as to lie several times to make himself look the victim, make himself look the degraded, abused hero in this tale between him and I - to make himself look like the person beaten down by “the Man,” so to speak. He’s seen before people talk trash and lies to make me look bad, and knows how much I hate people doing that. And then he did it himself to get attention and pity when I went to bed. I can’t be in a friendship like that.

We’ve already found someone to replace him for both judging and making the sheets and logging the entries, someone who volunteered eagerly when I asked for help. She’s incredibly nice to be offering, even, and I appreciate it a lot (because I don’t want to do it!).

I thought I should finally get all of this off of my chest and out into the open though, and I wish I had recognized all of this for what it was sooner. Thank you if you’ve actually read down this far.