Since the game is likely wrapping soon, it's time for me to say something:
I'm leaving the leadership team. I'm not leaving the community or the server, but I need to be done with mafia and I can't be while I'm still part of the decisionmakers. I need to let the game go, and if I'm going to do that, I have to send the responsibility with it.
I'm not doing this because of anything in this game, or at least, not anything other than myself in this game. I'm just not the same as I was and I need to be done with mafia. I have loved helping to keep this community going, but for the last... four? more? years, I've thought about it almost every day. I need a break at the very least.
So I'm done. I've let everyone know and give them time to prepare and like I said, if anyone needs anything, it's not like I'm going anywhere.
That said, I will talk about this game.
I absolutely own my own meltdown. Sometimes it takes me some time to recalibrate and pivot when things take me by surprise, and I don't think anyone quite understands what took me by surprise.
I had what felt to me like a perfectly legitimate suspicion on Ty due to a steady decrease in activity and engagement. Was it a good read, a bad read? I dunno - it felt okay in the moment and I wasn't the only one. Maybe not a good play, but it was an avenue and there was absolutely no reason it couldn't be. I read spec and the whole "it's so infuriating to be told to scumhunt when you're scumhunting" - and I agree, actually! but in my POV, Ty had basically stopped, and when I and Vere started talking about this, Ty came in and just completely went ham on me. Not on Vere, though most of his posts were TO Vere - I was the target of most of the insults, though. And they were insults. And it's sure fun to read some of them repeated in spec. Because, see, I wasn't "scum spouting bullshit." I was town with a bad read, which is... completely normal. And if Ty had actually engaged with me, I might have gotten through it.
I'd already been working on trying to let go of my reads sussing other people who were active - not sticking in, not doubling down, but considering and reconsidering. It's what got me to town Vere. It's what got me to town Rando. But for some reason, when I went to Ty, it was an offense. Why? How? What the fuck?
And then I tried to be cool about it but it kept happening and so days later, while I struggled to be in the game at all as I had hurt my back (pretty fucking severely, too, tbh; still hurts), at the very end of the phase, Ty claimed. A good claim in normal moments, yes. Great timing. But it doesn't just make scum scramble, spec. It makes town who's spend the last 48 hours being insulted scramble, too. I could not, in that moment, process why someone who was town and who I wanted to have good faith engagement with would just yell at me for two days instead of trying to have even a single conversation. I just couldn't. It didn't make any sense to me.
But you know what? I do it too. We all do it. I'm not even mad at Ty (though I remain confused about how that went down) because his reaction was as normal as mine was. We insult each other. Sometimes it's in good fun. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's hard to tell. We scream and we insult each other and we call each other fucking idiots and I just don't think I'm here for that anymore.
I love the puzzle. It's not worth the hurt.
And for me, I think, it's worse - not that I get it anymore than anyone else, though sometimes I think I do - but it's that I get it outside of the games, too. I get yelled at and insulted for trying to shepherd the community. And I think over time it's just all been mashed together for me. Maybe I'm also just more tender these days. I don't know. But something changed and mostly, I'm miserable when I try to do this.
Feels bad. Feels really bad and has for a long time.
So I'm done. For real this time.
I want to say one thing as a gentle caution: please remember that while our friendships in the community are truly the best part of everything, they can also cut people out. Cliques in the games are getting more and more apparent, and it's something folks should watch for. Early on it didn't feel that way - just more felt like the community was one group (though maybe that was just my perspective). Now, not so much. So I'd maybe just keep an eye on that and see what can be done to mitigate.