Adieu, Mitsutaka

I came here based on a story I'd heard from an old friend of mine, known here as Akimoto Nakamura. He told me about a recent power play that had shifted control of the site between Urufu, Kyousuke, and Tova. Details of that are unimportant and in any case, not my story to tell. But I thought this site sounded like fun. I'd never been that much a fan of Bleach, but even back then I had an inkling that the setting was pretty great.

I created Mitsutaka as a sort of foil for the person I wanted to be, way back when. I thought becoming more analytical and more ruthless would make me a better person. Instead, he became a character whose growth matched my own--often in very startling parallels. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had no plans for ownership early on, though I can't deny I've always craved power. One night in the chatbox I saw Riko and, having some free time, shot her a message asking her about herself. In some ways it was genuine interest and in some ways... well, it worked. I stood out. Hikari and I started writing. Eventually, I came on staff, though I don't quite remember how. At first it was an awesome opportunity--I met Tova, whom I'd heard good things about--and I got a good oppprtunity to fix up a bunch of the rules topics. Back then they were written mostly by Hikari, whose written English skills could use some work.

However, things got messy on me fast. There was this complicated triangle (love? I honestly can't recall) between Tova, Riko and me. She was not a very stable person. I hear she's doing better now. Around the time I became an Admin, things really started to go downhill. Tova's character was involved with this other girl, whom you now know as Lessa. They were off having romance and Riko didn't handle it very well. She deleted their entire romance thread, which set off giant red flags for me. We fixed that up as best we could and Riko was contrite, but I realized that there was no reason this wouldn't happen again. I went to Tova for counsel, and he urged me to act immediately. So I stripped her of her powers, made an announcement, and she disappeared.

I had a couple days. Things went well, but that's not much of a reflection on me. Fact is, head adminship doesn't actually matter all that much in everyday life. Unless it's Kyousuke running the show--and he did the same thing to me I'd done to Riko only a couple days afterwards. How'd he manage that? It's a secret, but I'm sure you can guess. Remarkably, others pulled the original admin of the ForumsMotion board (who here still remembers that?) and she decided I was the better one to rule. Kyousuke got kicked out and I took over.

Things were okay on the surface, but not so hot behind closed doors. I set up a dictatorship which functioned but was very hard on those below me, no surprise. It was the best way I knew how to run things. Sooner or later, however, I cottoned on that this wouldn't work forever*; for one thing, I had no idea how to do mechanics well. Still don't. Don't ask me to. So I split up the power, initially into two: Approvals and Mechanics. Tova got that spot, of course.

Somewhere around this time, I got involved with Cho Ah Amai. Great girl. I ended up head over heels for her, though she had to do several months of work for me to finally realize she was interested. I'm not always the most aware. However, this caused the beginning of a bunch of rifts between me and the community. See, Cho Ah had a tendency to be prickly, and she spent a lot of time in the chatbox. Naturally she'd come running to me and I'd have a choice: her or the site? Preferential treatment or impartiality? I tried to choose both--be only barely nicer to her, and still try to keep her accountable--but ended up offending both sides. No good. I should have picked one or the other.

After a few months of this, people started to get really offended. Though I only knew about this later, they created a sub-Forumsmotion: BitchGotei. It might still be around there if you look. Their complaints mostly came in three types: Mitsutaka's too preferential, Tova's running the site behind the scenes, and the last one, Mitsutaka's putting us all in danger.

That last one deserves some explanation. The Golden War (remember Gilgamesh?) was raging at that point and we needed some hugely polarizing event to pull as many people into it as possible; otherwise it was simply a forced plot. Since I already had Jack the Ripper lying around, I decided to kick him into overdrive. I talked with Tori one-on-one, at that point Tova's character's lover, and decided to make her the focal point. Of course, the only way to make it horrific and polarizing enough was to make it all seem like it had happened against her will. What did he do? Pretended to rape and kill her. Dramatic enough for you?

I don't really have an excuse for thinking this methodology would work out for me. In the end it was polarizing, but against me, not Gilgamesh.

People reacted about as badly as they should have, with the exception of one: Hakuren, who decided I'd gone way too far. She submitted a complaint to Forumsmotion that was very dramatic in its terms, including--I believe--the term "described raping an underage member." She later realized the problem with lying like that and was very repentant. I don't hold a grudge against her. But to be clear:

I didn't do that. I'm not twisted, and I'm not stupid. But Forumsmotion promised to launch an investigation.

It didn't occur to me at the time what a Big Deal that was, but it's certainly clear now. Suffice to say nothing came of it, thank God.

In any case, an allegation of that kind of misuse of the board carried the possble penalty of the site being shut down. They promised something like a week before the investigation would cease and result in the forum being closed or not. Since staff boards were never airtight, this got out. People were understandably angry at me.

This all built up and finally two things happened in varying proximity: we moved sites to where we are now and I got deposed (by TK, I think). I was then dragged before the public, willingly, and yelled at for a while. I defended myself and after a day or so it wrapped up. I got back on staff with a much more split management style. Bitchgotei dried up (shoutout to you, Jake!) and the forumsmotion board is still around, acting as a redirect. If you press "stop" fast enough you can still explore it.

Something else was happening behind the scenes, too. For about a month Tova and I had been in development with Hikari on a new business venture he was keen on seizing: turning BG into a show. With the imminent end of the anime (has it picked back up?) fans were of course salivating for more Bleach. And if we grabbed a license, we could be that new influx. In theory, the idea is very cool: to be involved in the show, players pay a small monthly stipend to have their characters doing cool animated stuff. Players who don't want to pay can still play, but won't nab spots in the show. Fun for everybody.
In practice, this would be a nightmare to finance and license. All I know is what I've been told, which is that things were going along just fine (we checked this out individually, of course, and it all looked legit) but me (and Tova? Did he get thrown out?) getting deposed threw a huge wrench in the process. Hikari, full of self-righteous fury, came in swinging and blustering. Turned out he didn't have any sort of copyright yet and when TK/etc went poking, it got delayed a couple years by the companies involved. End result: plan fell apart, Hikari got banned, business as normal.
Could it have actually happened? Maybe. Doubtful. But it was a nice idea.

However, in the whole mess--maybe before or after--we picked up Jemukatashi. Good guy. Hugely stubborn. I didn't work with him very well. That is an understatement. Every time I tried to change his mind on something it was a huge, drawn-out process (if you have staff powers, you can see multiple pages of me explaining something several times in different ways, all to no effect) and even then it sometimes didn't work. I can't say I'm blameless, of course: I always treated him like an enemy since the first time I had to explain myself to his brick-wall-attitude.

This was all not a great way to spend the first year of college, so I eased back on the site. In the end, Jemukatashi left. Kyousuke came back.

I didn't have a good relationship with him at the start. I thought he was irritating and unintelligent. Turns out he was only irritating. He's gone now (and put my and Tova's ending plans in a hole) but I still respect the guy. We did a lot of good together, the three of us. My respect for Tova is well-established, and I should mention the dynamic between us.
The people of BitchGotei were mostly right on that front, in fact. He was the power behind the scenes when I didn't notice it at first and later, when I did. It's what's been best for the site, I think. He has more experience than I and him going through me first was a good check on any ultimate power. I've always been more concerned with the writing portion of the site.

Kyousuke left, like I said, and that's plagued Tova and me for the past six months (has it been that long? Maybe not). We were all ready to launch our grand send-off, but it's taken us this long. In true Tova fashion, I heard nothing from him for a few months and then we've banged out this excellent end in just a few days. Can't say I'm not guilty of the same.

And here we are now. I'm still Approvals Admin 3 years later, though it's definitely been a bumpy ride. And you know what? There's nowhere I'd rather be.

*I might be misrepresenting myself. This may be more credit than I deserve. I don't quite remember.

I think now's as good a time as any to give a little synopsis. Just something short, so if you want to know you don't have to go slogging through a ton of work.

Once there was a man in old England who had a very poor childhood. He hated women because of what his stepmother did to his father, and after being horribly abused he killed her by accident. Now there was nowhere for his anger to go, so he started attacking other women. He met a nice girl named Elizabeth who started to cure him and the killings--he explained his behavior by pretending he was investigating--dried up. However, he saw her flirting with another man and snapped. Raped her. Killed her. Not a very nice guy. He realized he was all kinds of messed up, so he killed himself.
He got purified and, for some reason, sent to the Seireitei. Maybe there was good in him. His mind fractured into three pieces: one, coldly emotional so he'd never snap again: the Shinigami. One, prideful and spiteful, always taunting him: the Zanpakuto. One, emotional and feeling, always locked away: the Inner Hollow. His memory got twisted to make him the good guy: he was the investigator, and he killed the murderer in revenge for his girlfriend. The rest was murky.
He came to the Seireitei, then the Fourth, always approaching people like they needed to be fixed--especially those with Hollow nature. Loved by Kasumi. Friends with Hikari. Many more Vaizards. Always tried to piece them forcefully back together, but the results were horrendous. He felt like he caused each one of their deaths.
Something strange happened when he became a Vaizard at Tova's hand: it was his Zanpakuto manifesting. He didn't understand at first, but when Gilgamesh revealed Mitsutaka's true past, he retreated far inside himself. The Zanpakuto--Inner Hollow?--took over and made him Jack the Ripper again. He did terrible things, but was put down by Tova. Cho Ah healed him. He was beginning to see the parts of himself as a whole, but when he was maimed in the Las Noches invasion he took the opportunity to throw Zanpakuto and Mask away. He thought he was better off. Cho Ah left him. He became a wreck in a hospital bed. An invalid. Weak.
Confronted by the alternate Tova, he was killed and spen the last minutes inside his own mind. He realized he'd been treating people like problems to be forcibly solved, Lessa being the example of someone he'd simply let be and had turned out excellently. He contemplated suicide but rejected it in favor of spending his life in service of others, as a modicum of penance.
From there, he turned Transcendental and made a nice garden. He's still there. Come visit.

Well, he'll still be around. It'll either be me playing him or someone else in staff; that's what retiring entails for us Transcendentals. We'll still be here if you want to spark a plot or something for your own character.
He's still in his garden. He likes visitors.