Quote Originally Posted by Heroman3003 View Post
Most vocal posters of this thread got banned because they are incapable of actually being civil
Actually it's an inverse of that, in every respect. Well, usually. Some folks do fit that bill, sadly.

Anyway, most vocal folks in this thread simply unsubbed or haven't logged in, in months, so they can't access the forum to post at all until they do.

These same folks would voice their opinions and participate in discussions as amicably as possible, and then get insulted dozens of times by different people. Sometimes directly, but more often through passive aggressive implications (I.E. those veiled metaphors you mention come from the crowd more than they do these people). Often with regards to the fallacy of Liking Villains in Fiction = Liking Real World Evil. Insults like this would go on for months, with few of the perpetrators ever given so much as slaps on their wrists. And it was endorsed to a worrisome degree, because people did not like their opinions on the story or characters, long before this thread ever existed.

They were just as invested, if not moreso, than the people who disliked them. And they were disliked because of a weird cognitive compartmentalization a lot of FFXIV folks do where liking the villains of the story is verboten and seen as an endorsement of villainous actions and intent. Rather than, you know, liking them because their gear is cool and they are hot or whatever.

They were largely alone in expressing their opinions until Shadowbringers greenlit villain enjoyers with Emet-selch (not too mention creating quite a few). And even then, it wasn't until the pandemic caused a surge in forum visitation that the ball really got rolling, bringing far more like minded individuals into contact than ever before.

Anyway, the banning of Theodric definitely feels like someone from the years of this back and forth finally fulfilling their vendetta, rather than a justified moderation action. The guy had over 10k posts, and had been a forum denizen since ARR 2.0. You know, back when the forum was ban happy, and you could get banned for the slightest heat in a disagreement. They were so ban happy back then, I didn't even bother posting on them with any regularity until Heavensward myself, and even then, usually for bug reports or things akin to that.

But he'd built a reputation as a forum boogeyman of sorts, which I still find strange, since he's fairly level headed every interaction and DM I've had with him. I honestly don't know how he maintained his sanity posting his honest opinion month after month when it was going to be interpreted in bad faith by half a dozen people, and get him insulted on top of that. If he thought a discussion was going nowhere he'd shrug and say, "Let's agree to disagree." And that, apparently, started to be considered a hostility.

And he wasn't all squabbles over lore and the game either. He'd post in the social threads and post photos of his nature hikes and things like that. He'd voice concerns over gameplay and participate in threads about most aspects of the game.