Hey, guys.

As those of you on Plurk have probably noticed, I've been preoccupied with offline affairs in the past few weeks. This has escalated to the point where they are hampering my duties as a mod and my RP activity, and sadly, I don't believe life will get any less busy for me in the upcoming months. As a result, I've decided to step down from my roles as Head Mod and NPC Mod.

I would like to apologize to my fellow mods and players for the delays on my part, but I also want everyone to know that I thoroughly enjoyed helping out in an administrative position. I've learned quite a bit from the challenging experience, and I am very grateful to Court and Erin for giving me the opportunity as well as Jansen for being my partner-in-crime in formulating the military arc and its aftermath.

In my place, Claire (slan) will assume the position as Head Mod alongside Court and Jansen. She has been a wonderful help to us so far and should be more than excellent in the position. Give her all the support you can, guys!

As a reassurance, I will still be around with Nigredo and Tear; this is definitely not a good-bye.

Thank you, everyone, for your support and patience over the past year. Please continue to make Damned a great place to be in!

- Psyche

Hello, Damnedites. It's about high time I make an announcement.

A long time ago, in a high school far, far away, my best friend Court told me about a little asylum game called landels and asked if I would join her there.

At the time, I was fairly new to LJ RP; previously, Court and I had tried to get a few projects off the ground with message boards but hadn't had much luck. I remember, back then, that the idea of coming up with a story that other people could share in was something unbelievably exciting to me, but when our efforts fell through, I began to lose faith in our ability to do it. We'll leave it to the experts, I thought.

So when Court invited me into landels, I remember thinking: "Hey, sure. I'll just be a regular player this time."

At the time, I was into Fullmetal Alchemist, and when I found out that Kimbley, the character I originally wanted, was taken, I went for Scar instead. I remember I had a moment of hesitation about that. I remember almost passing over the idea. I also remember when things started going a little skewy, when Court, Fey, myself, and a few other players decided to break off from the game and create landels_redux. That time, too, I decided that instead of being directly involved in the plot, I should just contribute work and communicate with the players. "Hey, sure. I'll just be a helper."

But then that got skewy too, and in a matter of months, Court, Fey, and myself found ourselves faced with the prospect of breaking off again. This time, it'd be just the three of us, and this time, we'd be the ones taking charge.

I remember spitballing ideas for the name of the third incarnation in an AIM window. Landel's Third? Landel's Redux-Redux? Finally, we came upon "Landel's Damned." "The journals will be damned_insert-name-here," I remember saying. "Like 'damned_mods,' as in, 'those damned mods don't know what they're doing.'" After two incarnations, that's what I genuinely thought: we'd be "those damned mods." We wouldn't know what we were doing.

Despite this, from the first day we opened damned, we promised ourselves that we'd try our hardest. We'd run it professionally to the best of our ability and we'd set standard of quality that we felt comfortable with. We hoped we could pull it off, but for all we knew, it'd end up like those message board games: ambitious, but fallacious. False starts, long dead.

Little did I know that now, five years later, I'd be saying farewell to a playerbase more talented and loyal than any I'd ever known, in a game that has become one of the biggest parts of my life.

In the first year and a half that I helped run damned, I was out of high school but not in college. I wanted to tell stories and I wanted to share them with others, but I had no idea how. I had no idea if I could. Much of the time, I felt lost, but most of all, I felt small. I felt, more than anything, that I couldn't make a difference to anyone.

But damned kept me busy, and it gave me a project to work on and to love. It became our baby, and when damned's members grew to a number we mods had never imagined, with a reputation that we could never have anticipated, we realized we weren't the only ones who felt it was something special. damned didn't just have a playerbase; it had a fanbase. It had taken on a life of its own.

Knowing that I had a part in something that had such an impact on so many people kept me going through many rough patches in my life. It gave me purpose, self-confidence, and more leadership experience than I ever thought I needed; my time as a moderator at damned is still listed on my professional resumé, including "evaluated 1000+ applications for writing quality and characterization."

That's a hell of a lot.

That resumé now has other qualifications on it too, from positions that are getting me closer to my life's goals than I ever thought I'd be. I've been schooling and I've been interning and I'm on a path of incredible opportunity that never would have been possible without the experience and support I've received from this community. However, in following this path, I find I have to give up the very thing that has enabled me to get this far in the first place.

I love you guys. I have met so many incredible, brilliant, beautiful people through this community and I have learned so much about being a leader, a writer, and a friend from all of you. There are literally too many people to thank in a single post, so let me instead say that if you know me, you have affected me. If you have played here, you have contributed to an important part of my life. damned has been my rock and my anchor for five years, but now it's finally time to pull up the chain and leave port.

I hereby resign as Head Mod of damned. Handing over the_head_doctor; dropping beyondinfinity; dropping 7_to_midnight.

Weirdly, that's the thing I'm having the hardest time letting go: my beloved, lying, murdering, shapeshifting, big damn serial killer. Sybrows, I've said for years I'd never drop you, and it still kills me that I have to. Gonna miss you, dude.

In my place, Psyche (psyches) and Jansen (nest) -- long-time players, military arc masterminds, and all-around amazing individuals -- will be taking my place next to Court as Head Mods. They've already proved themselves capable of the immense creativity, proactivity, and responsibility required of a mod position, and I have every confidence that with those qualities, they'll help this amazing community flourish for a long time to come.

Although I'm no longer on the internet as much as I used to be, please keep in touch through my personal LJ (lacidiana), my e-mail (lacidiana[at]gmail[dot]com), or Plurk (LaCidiana). I may have to leave you guys, but I don't want to lose you.

Goodbye, Damned. Keep up the paperwork – to infinity, and beyond.

-- Erin