Mr. Hands

This seems like a very well thought out and mature response, which I'm sad to see you really haven't gotten back in these comments.
Having my own history with floraverse and the people in it, I'm going to have my bias's, but overall I agree with just about all of your statements. Especially in connecting with the earlier parts of the story and how people may want to sort of continue those characters legacy in their own way, so to speak. Being a fan of flora doesn't mean one endorses the actions of the creator.

I'm also pretty sure I responded to one of your older pieces of flora fanart when it came out about one of the things glip had done, my apologies if if felt accusatory or aimed at you. As for doing your own research, I'd say stay off of KF and Youtube for sure. There's plenty of logs and documents available elsewhere.

Hey for anyone coming to this without context: all of the claims about glip in this post are incorrect. It's all fairly trivially disproven, but the people who hate them have hated them so much for so long that the documents disproving them are very long and most people just don't bother to even look at them. But if you are interested in the truth, you can find them here.

Heya Pom I’m really happy to hear you’ve gotten away from floraverse. My time in the servers fucked me up beyond belief, I also thought it was going to be a safe place and it was definitely not. Also the assholes who are sending hate are fucking weird and actually shitty as hell!!!!

Hey Pom.

The short version is that I'm extremely disappointed to see this kind of thing from you. I regret feeling like I could trust you, and I regret financially supporting you. Most of all, I regret in whatever ways I supported you in drawing glip's characters when you were harboring these kinds of feelings about them, especially in vulnerable situations. I regret any feeling of legitimacy I gave you in drawing them. It wasn't okay in any way for me to commission glip's characters from you. I can't tell you to remove my commission from your social media, but I want you to know I would prefer if you did. On social media where posts can be edited, I would prefer if you removed my name as the commissioner. I do not want to be associated with it or you going forward.

I hope you'll read the rest of my reply. It's not like we ever really talked outside of commission talk, but if you ever had a good impression of me, I hope that impression will inform what I have to say.

It is really upsetting to me that you feel it is appropriate to keep drawing glip's characters, knowing it will hurt them. I understand you think glip is "a bad person," but it still seems awful to me that you would feel comfortable using an artist's personal characters knowing full well that it will cause them pain. It feels like you are justifying hurting someone because you are horny for their character designs/dynamics. I can't see how that's okay.

Have you imagined how that would feel? Imagine if someone said, "Pom is a pedophile; he's a Toyle fan, and Toyle's last major character beat in Floraverse was sexualizing a minor, that must be why he likes Toyle so much. I will be drawing the Division 6 members in ways I know that will hurt Pom because they deserve better than to be associated with a pedophile." Imagine someone was genuinely convinced you were a pedophile, and chose to draw your characters in ways that they knew would hurt for you -- would that really be okay?

Can you imagine someone saying, "Division 6 deserves better than Pom"?

As for glip being a zoophile, that's a really horrible thing to say. You're conflating "someone being coerced by an abusive husband into doing something they never wanted to do" with "someone who willingly abuses animals". How is that okay?? Yes, it was a mistake for glip to go along with Marl's demands, but are you going to blame every victim of coercion as if they were fully willing to do what they were forced into? You're going to take someone who was rescued from a CSA situation by a zoophile and emotionally coerced into a miserable, horrible experience for them... and just lump them in with the zoophile?

Do you understand why that seems so horrifying to me?

Do you see how that undermines the meaning of the word "zoophile" for me? I'm not okay with conflating the two situations like that.

Again, yes, it was a mistake, and sure, if that mistake made you feel uncomfortable being in glip's space or interacting with glip's work, those are your feelings and you have the right to set boundaries. But simply calling them a zoophile and leaving it at that? That's such a gross erasing of context.

(It also seems bizarre to me that, if you truly believed glip was a zoophile, you would join their spaces at all. I have never joined or remained in the space of someone who I believed to be a zoophile. No matter how much I love some media, I could never love it enough to tolerate being in a zoophile's space, not by a long shot. It makes your complaint ring hollow.)

Most of the rest of your complaints lack any particular substance. You thought the servers would be a place to share your thoughts and headcanons? Okay? What was stopping you from starting those conversations? Instead there was... RP? Okay?? Is that supposed to be sinister??

There was venting? Okay??? Oh no, people talking about their problems, how disgusting and deplorable????

Oh no, the tone of the comic changed? It became more auto-biographical? Is that supposed to be a problem?? "Holy shit you guys, someone rooted their work of fiction in autobiographical details, and that's a problem because I preferred when it wasn't!!" Are you listening to yourself?

Have you put any personal feelings into Division 6? Can you imagine someone saying, "I preferred Division 6 BEFORE you included those feelings! How dare you vent about your feelings through your art?? I'm putting this into a callout!"
Does that sound rational or fair to you? What is wrong with you?

Why are you upset that the comic might lead someone to want to know what Marl did? Isn't it better that actual zoophiles like Marl be exposed? Wouldn't it be worse if glip hid what Marl did?

Doesn't it make sense that someone who went through such a harrowing experience would want to make art about it? Doesn't it make sense that their art might reach people in similarly abusive situations and hopefully help them out of it sooner? Isn't it a good thing that conversations can be had about abuse, both relationship abuse and animal abuse?

Would it better if it was covered up? Is "a fun webcomic" worth so much to you that you're willing to dictate to the author what they're allowed to include in their art? Are artists not allowed to talk about their lives, and let it inform their art? Is that where your priorities are?

It's just... sorry, this is harsh, but the tone I get from your callout post is, "Yeah, Marl pushed animal abuse on other people and that's horrid or whatever, but the REAL victim here is that it ended up affecting a webcomic I liked!"

And then to finish it off, I find it bizarre that you put "preying on young and mentally ill queer individuals" in the content warning and then didn't elaborate in the slightest. Preying on them... how? By... having a community space for a webcomic that goes into heavy topics?

I get that not everyone vibes with the Flora servers. They can be intense and that's not for everyone. I can understand wanting fun, easy spaces. I don't see how that becomes "preying" on "mentally ill queer individuals." Those feel like huge, loaded words to describe what I experienced, which is "when someone's behavior is hurting others, it tends to be closely examined in ways it wouldn't be elsewhere, and that can be shocking and potentially distressing to someone not expecting it." If you can't handle it, fine.

I think that's everything I want to say. I do not imagine we will have a reason to interact again. I hope you will do your best to see where I am coming from. I will say again that I do not think you should draw glip's characters ever again. I think to do so against their wishes is cruel, regardless of what you may think of them or their spaces, just as I think it would be cruel for someone to draw Division 6 characters knowing that in doing so, they would hurt you. I hope that makes sense.

Goodbye.

I'm going to leave my thoughts here in reply to what I've heard of the post. I've only read what's in your post, Eevee, and so I haven't read Pom's post in full, but I don't really intend to as it feels like they want my attention specifically and I don't think it's healthy for me to directly engage with someone who doesn't seem to care about my consent or find it important whatsoever. I'm going to ramble for a bit about my experiences with Pom and how the writing comes across to me, so as to get it down now and stand up for myself.

It honestly feels like a callout written by ChatGPT. AI generated callout. Mishmash of various callouts with no substance. Though all of it feels very bad to read with the context I understand of Pom, from having tried to care about how Pom was ignoring the feelings of his ex partner, Radny. I spoke with Radny a fair amount during Althar, because Radny was part of the Althar RP, and I tried to put a lot of effort into caring about the players participating in the RP, because the RP was specifically about exploring and caring about feelings. I'm going to elaborate.

Radny's friend group (including Pom) had been reading Floraverse together, and this was something they were doing up to the point that several of them were trying to apply to the RP (which lasted from the 12th of March to the 26th of September). Circlet of the Sun was mentioned because one of Radny's friends (Zwei) wanted to read it.

Circlet of the Sun was a VN I made with others, about the experience of myself and others in the Floraverse community getting hurt by a particular individual who did not respect that the characters had personal feelings in them. This individual kept overlaying kink/horny feelings on my characters in ways that caused me and others pain and discomfort. It stayed up for three years, and then I took it down for plot reasons aligned with healing intent. KF was down during the time period I took Circlet of the Sun down, and I thought it was a good time to do so, because I don't believe in permanent pain that cannot change into healing. So, I wanted to give an opportunity for the person who hurt me to be able to grow and change without this giant way they mistreated me and others hanging over them. One of my characters, TALwire, "ate" the story Circlet of the Sun, so that TALwire could process the feelings in it instead of it being public.

Somehow, Pom has warped this into Circlet of the Sun being taken down due to... drama? And Pom, to my knowledge, seems to have sought the story out and found a backup of the VN that I didn't consent to being backed up. Radny (Pom's ex) cared about my consent here and didn't read it, but it's my understanding that Pom did not care about my consent and continues to not care about my consent.

It hurts that Pom has twisted my reasons away from what they are. Pom was never someone I was close to, and I don't think we ever talked. I never shared much about why I took down Circlet of the Sun - I think I told 3 people maybe at the time I took it down, because for me the healing intentions would manifest better over time if I kept quiet. Pom has somehow decided the reasons for taking it down are "for drama" when the exact opposite is true. I don't understand where they're getting this impression (and frankly, I don't care either, because they seem to be making up or parroting whatever sounds bad). I don't understand how they can say "ask anyone who knows", as if they were ever in the know or could ever have been in the know. They knew 0 about it and it's exceedingly clear to me and it sucks to see them just kind of inventing a fanfiction about me and my life, again. This is part of why I want them to stop engaging Flora. It feels creepy. The way they treat my characters honestly is not that different from what hurt me about the individual Circlet of the Sun was about. It feels very gross to me when people act like they deserve my characters just because they want them.

They never had to read Flora. None of Flora is "required reading". Circlet of the Sun wasn't "required reading". It's all my feelings and experiences and world views. If anyone doesn't like it, leave. Stop acting entitled to my characters. Stop trying to separate my characters from their context, which includes me. Stop just inventing cruel narratives about me that aren't true so you can brainlessly make porn and bitch about how minors exist in a space which means that, god forbid, you have to actually think about your language around them and you can't just be mindlessly horny.

It honestly hurts to think about how Pom seems to mostly have wanted a place to draw and share porn of my characters. I never wanted this from them. I never liked this from them. I never approved of this from them. I didn't like them fetishizing Toyle or calling themself a "Toyle apologist" because Toyle's last role in the story was sexualizing a minor, and Toyle also has callout ties to not treating bestiality as serious or painful... and these feelings came from the last person who played Toyle (name of Reynart), who I removed from my community when I found out they were a zoophile and also sexualized children. It made me very unhappy, and I decided to just work with the mark they left on Toyle, because myself and others genuinely were very negatively impacted by trusting Reynart who turned out to be into these things when they acted otherwise to our faces at first.

So, it hurts that Pom sexualizes Toyle the way they do. Even if Pom wasn't aware of this (and I don't think they were), Pom clearly did not care about actually asking me what feelings went into Toyle or any of the other characters they sexualized. It hurts. I hope they will stop. It makes me feel gross when people act like they can just denounce me and my feelings and then take my characters for themselves. It's disgusting and selfish and careless, and it reflects how Pom treated my consent and what I understand of how Pom treated their ex partner, Radny, when Radny was confiding in me what happened during their relationship.

I feel frustration. Pom lied to Radny, misled Pom's friends, and was overall dishonest, is my understanding... I felt a lot of concern when Radny would tell me how Pom was treating Radny, and I saw various ways that Radny was bleeding pain from elsewhere into how Radny's character Posaune acted during the RP.

In particular, Radny expressed to me that he would have worries and Pom would soothe him or brush things off. Radny would try to ask what was wrong and Pom wouldn't really answer. The things Radny told me really made me worry that Radny was being abused possibly, and I tried to voice my concern for how it felt like Radny was being ignored. For example, Pom had a lot of complaints about one of their mutual friends, Zwei, and Radny would become the dumping ground for this. And then Pom wouldn't bring it up to Zwei? And Radny kept getting hurt by this, because Radny had a lot of pain with Zwei that wasn't resolved. (This was before their breakup. It was a few months ago by now.)

It felt bad. It felt like Radny's concerns weren't being taken seriously. I tried to just state how I felt about the treatment and not push it though. It made me uncomfortable too, because I had a lot of discomfort about how Zwei treated people and characters during the Althar RP, and so I felt for Radny here. It sounded a lot like Pom smoothed things over and lied to the friend group in order to act like things were fine when they weren't, and Radny suffered for this. It hurt to see this! I don't feel like Radny deserved the way Pom treated him, and I wish Pom had been kinder to Radny. I don't mean to say Radny acted perfectly by any means, as Radny has hurt me before, and hurt my characters too, but I tried hard to talk it out with him and approach things in healthy ways. We're still on good terms overall, and while I'm talking about him a lot here, I'm not talking FOR him. These are my own feelings about how Pom treated Radny that I'd been holding onto for months now, and finally want to talk about.

I don't know how to see Pom's post as anything other than lashing out for some reason. I have no idea what they mean about manipulation, as I try really really hard to make sure manipulation DOES NOT occur in my Discords. I try to ask people directly what they think and feel when I can. I removed Reynart (the Toyle player for a brief period) for manipulation because Rey was genuinely making the space unsafe, and as soon as I recognized that I removed them. I try hard to do this. I don't like speaking for others, and I like people's own feelings being heard. I don't like using other characters or things without consent, and so I don't understand how Pom can be saying literally any of this when he doesn't seem to care that I do not consent to the way he is treating my world. From what I understand, Pom was really twofaced to his friend group... and now is acting like I am... manipulating... who? Literally who?

It is my understanding (through speaking with Radny) that Pom had interest in participating in the RP until someone named Starry was denied. (Starry is another of the friend group.)

Starry's RP form was filled to the brim with red flags that set off alarms of "this character/form is a lot like other characters/forms where people got really hurt OOC". So I denied them. I was trying very hard to look out for people in the RP and not introduce elements that would be really damaging for everyone involved (including Starry). I didn't think Starry was a bad person or anything, but I (along with the rest of the RP mods) didn't think they'd be able to RP without hurting a lot of people, including themself. It seems like this has somehow twisted into Pom just hating Althar or something? I have no idea. I also don't really care a lot at the moment. Maybe later. But right now there is so much of Pom just trying to smear me in order to take things from me and I'm tired of it. I do not deserve their cruelty. No one does. Radny didn't. Zwei didn't deserve Pom lying to him, as much as Zwei hurt me and others too. I wish it'd just stop.

I don't really truly understand why Pom has decided to target me right now and invent narratives about me but I'm not standing for it. I wish Pom hadn't lied to Radny, I wish Pom hadn't acted like he's doing everyone a favor by being a tumor on the fandom. Go away.

I hope Pom will show any desire to improve his character and stop lying to those he's closest to.

My biggest question is what does pom even think Floraverse... Is?
They explicitly expressed intense dislike of the people who make it/work on it, they expressed disdain towards glip putting themself in their work (which is... What everyone who creates a personal project does), they belittled the culture and community implying that it's just 'venting' and RP (bizarre because Eastar isn't currently very active and I don't check the vent channel in Owel and yet somehow the server is popping off every day with people talking about positive things like their pets, what's going on with their days, games they like etc? And what is wrong with an RP server? Especially when they explicitly wanted to join?), so what's left?

"Floraverse" to pom is the world itself? The story? But that can't be, because the original work was made by glip, since they were like... 14? The world itself has glip in every atom of it.

Maybe pom means to separate the characters, as if expressing something like "these character's deserve better"... But then why is pom's hardline stance coming from wanting to draw porn of characters without considering others? Like, pom doesn't even know these characters. Pom doesn't know shit about toyle, pom has ideas they like about these characters but that's not the same as being the authority on them?

Truthfully, it ends up sounding like pom is writing a tinder profile, where they list their credentials of not liking Flora superficially while then going "but if you like Flora and aren't one of the people who will be uncomfortable from me doing things the creators/community don't like because you don't like the creators/community, then hit me up. Let's ERP or something."

hey thanks

is it even lies any more if they don't actually say anything, just Imply that there's Research if you go Look For It?? feels like a super weird adaptation happening here

I appreciate you chiming in here. It's so tiring to endure this stuff and feel alone with it. Thank you for your thoughts.

It really does agitate me when people act like it's such an inconvenience to them that I make work and post it about my complicated trauma. I really dislike the entitlement, the selfishness, the overall thoughtlessness and carelessness that goes into the kind of post Pom made. I wish he'd stopped reading it. I tried to warn everyone when the content was very serious or could be upsetting because that was important to me. I wish he didn't treat it as for him if he doesn't want to read it. Read something else. It's so upsetting.