A Message for Sonic Retro

          It's been over four months since I've been given a permanent ban on Sonic Retro. As much as I hate to admit this (especially since it sounds so goddamn pathetic), I feel like the quality of my life and my overall happiness has decreased since that happened. Prior to my ban, I spent many hours on that site each week. It's one of my favorite sites on the web and I felt like there was much I got out of it. Not only do I find the discussions and community really entertaining, but I learned a lot about the Sonic franchise, found out a ton of gaming news that I otherwise might've never noticed, learned quite a bit about game design, and some of the feedback I got about my Sonic sprite was beyond helpful. Not to mention I made some great friends, including Kaze (AKA Volpino on Retro) who is now one of my best friends. It's unlikely I would've ever met her or any of my other friends from Retro if I was never part of the site.

          Retro became an important part of my life and being thrown out of the community over an incident that occurred on April 21st has created a void in my life that I cannot seem to fill. In these past four months, I've paid attention to more gaming websites and searched for other forums to become part of, yet I can't find a suitable replacement or replacements for Sonic Retro. There's something about that site I just find extremely special. Nearly every other forum I used to be really active on is either dead or offline, so being banned also had the unfortunate side effect of having a forum addict like myself without a forum to really go to. There is Insomniac Flames (which is another site I love), but it's offline so much that its stability is poor and its activity is very inconsistent.

          There's also the issue of how all of this affected my mentality. I'm not a happy person and being banned from Retro hurt my view of myself. Lots of people have tried to convince me it's irrational to think less of myself over my forum ban, but I can't help it. Even though the rule I violated was mostly because of an interpretation of a rule as opposed to its strict wording, I feel like I really fucked up because my common sense is so horrible. Anyone with great common sense probably would've realized what I said could've backfired on me, but my tired self thought what I was saying was fine. Clearly I was wrong. A shame too since I tried to be a good member and had no prior offenses that I know of prior to posting about wanting Sonic 4: Episode II beta torrents. A few weeks after my ban, I did find out from Guess Who that ScaredSun sent me a warning to stop asking for torrents but I never received a pm about the warning or noticed the warning at all. If I saw that warning, I would've immediately stopped asking for torrents of the beta and been extremely careful for the rest of that morning.

          When Sonic Retro's Amnesty Week was announced, I felt this was going to be my only chance to get back on the site. I put a lot of effort into the lyrics I wrote for Amnesty Week (including the fact I rewrote what I had from scratch a few times), but I guess my entry didn't help matters seeing as it's almost two months since I entered it and I'm still a misfit. While I originally kept the lyrics private from the public (because I find the lyrics humiliating), I feel I should include them in this blog entry.

Banned from a forum I love
Over some posts I'm not proud of.
Foolishly asking questions I should not have said,
Should've shown more restraint instead of sticking out my head.

Though my actions weren't ill intended,
I misinterpreted rule sixteen and what it attempted.
You're friendly with SEGA and don't want that destroyed,
By a troublesome poster asking for links to a beta.

While asking for links isn't specifically stated,
Piracy isn't condoned and no linking is mentioned.
Should've gotten the message that asking was implied.
Learned my lesson too late; am I a misfit for life?

I apologize for what I've done,
What I did was pretty dumb.
If I could do it all over again,
I would not have angered the Sun.

This experience has bettered my knowledge of the rules.
Now I understand they're based off of staff interpretation.
If I'm allowed back, I'll be far more careful on what I say.
I'll never break rule sixteen again.

I apologize for what I've done,
What I did was pretty dumb.
If I could do it all over again,
I would not have angered the Sun.

          While I understand there are some serious inconsistencies with the lyrics (mostly involving rhyme), I tried to follow the Amnesty Week guidelines the best I could by striking a balance between showing the message I wanted to send out and trying to make the lyrics not god awful. If one of the staff members could tell me what aspect(s) of these lyrics prevented me from proving myself that I learned my lesson, that would be great because I tried my best to not offend or upset any staff members while still maintaining my sincere honesty of the circumstances.

          My big question to the staff (more specifically ScaredSun) is what do you recommend I do? If it's to give up on ever being allowed back, that will take many, many years. My 2006 ban from the Insomniac Games Forum definitely did not affect me as badly as my ban from Retro yet I didn't really get over that ban until their administration finally unbanned me earlier this year. By then however, the company who created that forum and the community were so different compared to how they were in early 2006 that it doesn't even feel like the same site to me. I'm not even a fan of any games IG made this generation where as I'm still idiotically obsessed with the Sonic franchise and Sonic Retro is hands down the best Sonic site out there for various reasons. It also has one of the only Sonic forums I can find that I like. If a staff member were to dig deep into my history on Retro, the post I made so I could be activated mentioned that I was trying to find a good Sonic forum and wanted to become a member of the community because Sonic Retro seemed like it had a nice site. Little did I realize I would become so attached to the site only to fuck everything up years later...

-William