How the Amino tested my patience with the DnD community

I won’t be using names of people or actual communities, but I won’t lie, it’s not hard to find if you try.

I had been running into a LOT of trouble trying to get my hands on a DnD game, it was just one endless BS train after another. That is until I found the Amino. The amino, if you haven’t heard of it is a neat little networking app that lets you comfortably put together large well constructed presentation blogs stories, and more kinda like this very website. But it’s sadly geared a little more towards kids. It does have a good adult population though. And happily I discovered it had it’s own set of DnD aminos.

I quickly joined and actually found a small group of amazing friends whom I play with all the time. We still get together and play amazing games. But sadly, one of the bad things about the Amino is that literally anyone can become a curator or leader with absolutely no vetting or anything even remotely close to a background check.

And so, the very first horrible incident occurred

I was poking around and I noticed someone asking questions about how to really put together a crazy immersive and highly historically accurate world. He said he wanted it as accurate as possible.

Now, I’m huge into history and I love world building. I was all too happy to jump in and take a look. Sadly, I clicked on his profile and noticed a HUGE collection of characters…. But EVERY SINGLE ONE of them… every last one… was almost offensively cartoonishly gay to a degree that some of them even had lewd and downright offensive slurs tattooed on their foreheads. Very VERY clearly defined male body parts BARELY contained in skin tight woman’s underwear, and rainbow hair as far as the eyes could see.

I remarked on the blog asking for —–>EXTREMELY HISTORICALLY ACCURATE WORLD BUILDING←–

“You know, historically, the world hasn’t been very kind to homosexuals… maybe we don’t go too historically accurate.”

BAM!… Banned for hate speech and homophobia.

I lost nearly a year’s worth of my posts, blogs and had to start rewriting my homebrew content. Thankfully I had another if not slightly less popular amino I could play in. But opening that amino, I was met with an interesting message. Allow me to tell you, word for word EXACTLY what it said.

[strike] You have been muted for 24 hours

Hi! Recently I’ve been alerted to homophobia on a different amino, I would like to inform you that homophobia is a violation of amino rules as if falls under hate speech. I would also like to inform you that your reasoning to be historically accurate is incorrect, history is painted with rainbows I for one know this because I am a re-enactor, people also do not play dnd to be historically accurate, the point of the game is to have fun and enjoy yourself even if you are a rainbow or black and white. I’ll be contacting team amino about your actions.

With regards team dnd ********** 

Have a pleasant day.

So yes, I was wrongfully banned, then punished further for what I didn’t do on a whole other platform.

Surprisingly, this didn’t actually make me leave.

After my 24 hour ban I went out and started over again, writing my stories, commissioning artwork and playing my games. Granted, there is a very SERIOUS problem in the animo community especially when artists are involved.

There’s this odd fanaticism around what is called “art theft” Which is treated VERY differently depending on who you ask.  But the basics is that you can’t just take a picture you found on google images and use it as your character’s image. Many think this is illegal for some reason, but yeah it’s taken VERY seriously on the amino. 

But I do a LOT of writing and I commision a LOT of artists. One artist I worked for helped me with one of my older characters and it was a lot of fun. But one thing I always do with my artists is I make them sign a terms of service bit. Basically saying that if I hire them, the art is fully, and legally my own possession. Especially since it was originally my own intellectual property, and I am paying for it to be made, I officially own the art, no matter who made it, when, or where. It’s mine and ONLY mine.

The artist even agreed, and the artist even asked politely if she could add her own signature into the art, both for advertisement whenever someone saw my character, and so that the art would credit itself and no one could claim I’m stealing it even if I didn’t have her signature on the TOS.

I agreed and still love my wonderful picture. But again, the lovely people from this amino paid me a visit DEMANDING that I credit the artist and prove that I have permission to use the art.

I told them it’s mine and no one else’s, and that the art itself has built in credit. But this wasn’t enough, I was blatantly called a thief and given seconds to credit the art or I would be banned. Literally, I received a message that said I had 45 seconds to change it or I was to be banned forever.

Not wanting to deal with the crap, I removed the picture all together. I would rather just not use my own property than give into the control freak who had it out for me for some reason.

Big mistake!

I was then quickly ordered to put the picture back up and to credit it and even if I did I would be receiving another strike. I in my own mildly polite way told the moderator to consume and have their airway blocked by a specific floppy reproductive organ. 

I was tired of being harrassed and attacked, I go through this crap all the time, I am a damned magnet for it, so I kinda put my foot down.

Big surprise… I was banned.

There wasn’t any other really active or even large aminos for me to join. So I went and created my own. And thankfully it’s rather active and growing pretty fast. It’s a great amino where I can continue my campaigns, my friends joined me and we are still to this day having fun.

I still keep my eyes open for the petty old curators knowing that trying to Sabotage my community is not below them.

[zombify_post]