SPOILERS Saying farewells to Jairus/Trying to make sense of it

[Makoeyes987]

The weirdest thing, though, and this may undermine my last point, is that this alt account has been on this forum since 2009, longer than me. That’s... very confusing. I mean, I understand the broadstrokes appeal of a sock puppet account, to circumvent blocking or to agree with oneself if you feel alone... but... to premeditate needing one, and by over a decade!? I’m honestly baffled at that. Am I missing something?

Axwind.... That name is familiar.

....

Holy shit. That's a user that was around since like the beginning here.

.... And I've interacted and had beef with them back when I was a mod/admin. What the fuck... They're an oldie. My God...

Why in the world did they make a new account and basically reincarnate themselves here? This gets weirder and weirder...

 

[Master Bates]

He was banned but he used an old account of his to keep posting here. Unfortunately for him, that's ban evasion and his Axwind account was permabanned. Jairus is still banned.

Oh I see. Haven't been checking around lately.

I absorbed the knowlege of the Ancients.

Now seriously, look at the right corner. There's a search function. It can come in handy.

Didn't think of using the search function like that. lol

 

[Odysseus]

The Jairus rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than I thought. The "Axwind" account predates the incident, so maybe that had something to do with it?
"Jairus" only joined last year, but I don't know how long he's been using that name outside of TLS. the name originates from the bible, he was a man who had a sick daughter he asked Jesus to heal. Make of that what you will.

 

[KindOfBlue]

the name originates from the bible, he was a man who had a sick daughter he asked Jesus to heal. Make of that what you will.

Aaaaaand that was my first clue! Don’t know if it actually meant anything as to why he picked that name, but that’s the only other time I’ve ever heard that name so it was my first thought

 

[Cat on Mars]

Aaaaaand that was my first clue!

Yep. It was pretty on the nose. Jairus is many things but "subtle" isn't one.

 

[Glaurung]

Eh... did I miss something?

 

[Fangu]

Eh... did I miss something?

This thread is worth reading.

I wish I knew all this before. I never got into debates with him but rethinking some of the things he wrote and how he was hanging on to hope for various stuff to happen in the Remake this makes me sad now. And I sort of feel like going back and replying 'yeah even though no evidence points at it for now, you still might be right. There is always a chance.'

 

[Fade]

I guess because I’m still pretty new here I didn’t feel it was appropriate to get into it with him.

Like you, I'm new around here (past connection to ACF notwithstanding), so I made a solitary attempt to engage with him on that level, hoping an outsider's perspective might, at least, provoke some self-reflection. It's easy to write off the same old crowd as just having beef with you, after all, and it was clear he thought of TLS as a sort of monolithic anti-Jessie entity. Pretty sure I can say it didn't get through, though.

As soon as I saw his picture in another thread and realised he wasn't a slightly-too-enthusiastic teenage fangirl, it became clear there was something less than healthy going on with him. I don't mean to dogpile, and there's a good chance he'll read this thread, so: Jairus, if you are reading, accepting you have a problem is the hardest step, but one you need to take. I don't think anyone here means you ill will, and most of what has been said here comes from the exact opposite place, in fact. This is really about a lot more than a video game, at this point.

 

[looneymoon]

Knowing his backstory now makes me feel a little bad for poking fun. I never paid much attention to the guy, but its kinda difficult to not notice how unhealthy his fixation is. That said, as annoying it has become for others... if trauma bonding with a fictional character is his outlet, at least that's... relatively harmless? I dont mean to minimize his behaviours, as that's probably what he's saying to himself to enable the toxicity cycle. I just... really hope these behaviours are at least mostly contained to the internet and such. If that's what he needs to make things feel a little less heavy, I cant really judge. No doubt, that's a seriously shit hand he's been dealt. I just hope he manages to sort it out so that he can one day engage in his interests without alienating people.

It's hard to really know how he might function IRL, but I really hope he takes this ban as a chance to unplug and connect with whatever support system he has in his day to day. Jairus - if you're somehow reading this, I'm sorry for being a bit of a dick before. You don't seem to be an ill-intentioned person. I sincerely hope all this can help you figure some stuff out, and you come out on the better end of it.

 

[Glaurung]

Reading his timeline on Twitter. He's still very much at it and with the same energy, which is very worrying.

Jairus, if you read this, please, get help. For your kid. I doubt you will listen to anyone of us, but think about your son and how he will look at you in the future.

 

[Lestat]

Lmfao

 

[Glaurung]

Honestly I limit myself to a number of threads, and that's been happening ever since I'm a member, so any time I witness the end of a drama play I'm exactly like this:

 

[ForceStealer]

originates from the bible, he was a man who had a sick daughter he asked Jesus to heal.

Wow he really has been around a long time

 

[Lestat]

Wait.... Was Jessie Mary Magdalene?
Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun

 

[Wol]

obsessing over a fictional character is never a good sign, it's ok to be inspired by heroes though.

Cloud suffered and mourned Aerith for a while but moved on and made his peace, he still has a life and things to protect and care.

Maybe try to remember and reflect that part as well.

 

[Prism]

I haven’t seen his Twitter, and perhaps it’s best not to, but the crux of it is that Jairus always seemed like a well-meaning guy that is plagued by layers of mental illness that ended up being intrusive into his life and the people he’s around, affecting both negatively.

It IS one hell of a plot twist that he’s this ancient member that made the account we all know him from last year, and that’s something I never would have expected. Given this old account is now locked, I was kind of curious if his posts from 2009 reflect a healthier mindset. I hope he gets help.

 

[Odysseus]

. if trauma bonding with a fictional character is his outlet, at least that's... relatively harmless? I dont mean to minimize his behaviours, as that's probably what he's saying to himself to enable the toxicity cycle.

Obviously I can't know what he acts like in reality, but I do know some of what he's done outside of TLS. He obsesses over Jessie cosplayers, he gets into even worse arguments on places like Game FAQs and FF.net than he did here, he harasses Square Enix and the remake voice actors on twitter... It's far from harmless. Saying that is just enabling him, like you said. The biggest reason I'm happy he got banned isn't even because I was sick of his rants, it's because I was sick of how you all kept indulging his behavior well beyond what was reasonable. It was clear from ages ago that TLS wasn't helping him, it was only inflaming his behavior. He got pointedly worse as time when on but decisive action wasn't taken, maybe everyone just hoped he'd stop on his own, but here we are.

 

[Lestat]

Jesus Christ, I never even knew half the shit about Twitter etc.
If it's that bad then I think it's unlikely he will get help but I suppose we can always hope.

 

[Erotic Materia]

He obsesses over Jessie cosplayers, he gets into even worse arguments on places like Game FAQs and FF.net than he did here, he harasses Square Enix and the remake voice actors on twitter... It's far from harmless.

Ok, I was curious, so I did some very light digging.... it took all of about 10 seconds to find this hot garbage.

SPOILER ALERT: He's still doing exactly the same shit he pulled when he was here. I don't think he's gonna spontaneously change his ways any time soon.

Scroll to the top for eye-twitching fun!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1301002991491788801

 

[Lestat]

I had a look at his Twitter.
Don't know what I was expecting after seeing your comments but..wow.

 

[Prism]

He obsesses over Jessie cosplayers, he gets into even worse arguments on places like Game FAQs and FF.net than he did here, he harasses Square Enix and the remake voice actors on twitter... It's far from harmless.

...Ah. That is...unhinged. Who knew that the TLS posts were the tip of the iceberg? I thought they WERE the iceberg.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

My god... browsing his twitter the other day was eye burning enough, but that whole argument I just read through is...

This is not healthy. It's difficult for me to comprehend how people have the time or motivation to keep arguments like this going... but you have to be driven by some deeply unresolved personal shit for this. I hope Jairus finds help. This fixation is... you know, I just don't even have the words anymore.

 

[Cat on Mars]

...Ah. That is...unhinged. Who knew that the TLS posts were the tip of the iceberg? I thought they WERE the iceberg.

I knew this was the tip of the iceberg.
At first I was nice to him and tried to engage with his arguments in good faith, but it was obvious he wasn't going to change his ways.

He was so unhinged that I decided to dig a bit and found all his posts in gameFAQs, his twitter and reddit accounts, and more shit I'm not posting here.
He's mentally unwell. That's not an excuse for his harassment of cosplayers, VAs and even people who left reviews about his fanfics on FF.net!

And all this was a single google search away. Everything was public and for everyone to see.

 

[Glaurung]

Obviously I can't know what he acts like in reality, but I do know some of what he's done outside of TLS. He obsesses over Jessie cosplayers, he gets into even worse arguments on places like Game FAQs and FF.net than he did here, he harasses Square Enix and the remake voice actors on twitter... It's far from harmless. Saying that is just enabling him, like you said. The biggest reason I'm happy he got banned isn't even because I was sick of his rants, it's because I was sick of how you all kept indulging his behavior well beyond what was reasonable. It was clear from ages ago that TLS wasn't helping him, it was only inflaming his behavior. He got pointedly worse as time when on but decisive action wasn't taken, maybe everyone just hoped he'd stop on his own, but here we are.

Maybe the fault lies on being "too nice"? I will include myself in this, in that we were too cautious not to hurt someone's feelings, and so we didn't speak aloud what maybe many of us thought from the get go.

I tried to be nice with him at first too, mainly because he seemed like a good person and had good skills at graphic design. Plus I asked him for some advice about my own novel and he was super nice about it (Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, as they say). And so I added his fanfict to my FF.net favs and alerts. But then I saw the conflict he had with a reader and, honestly, I didn't even touch the fict because what he did gave me really bad vibes. It's public and you can go read it, but I'll sum it up for you: A regular reader took longer than usual to leave a review, he tried sending her a PM but she had her mail clossed for unrelated reasons. Jairus created a Deviantart account with the sole purpose or contacting her via PM. She was geniunelly spooked by this and asked him to leave her alone and never contact her again. He apologized and I don't think he ever insisted again.

So his story sat on my alerts and I received the mails each time he updated, but as of today such thing is no more. I removed him from my list and boy am I glad that I stopped my interactions with him when I did.

One thing is sure: That he threw shade over our forum, yet he's finding in other places exactly the thing he accused us of doing. Wouldn't surprise me if he got blocked from a bunch of accounts and/or banned from sites and such.

Which could escalate in an even worse condition for him. This is fucked up.

 

[looneymoon]

Oh jeez... yeah that's not good. I figured given TLS being non-centralized as a social outlet, the worst of it was here. Yikes...

I really hope someone who knows him IRL and/or more personally can somehow get through to him. It's clear online spaces are feeding into all this. Hopefully there's an off chance that someone uses his computer and stumbles on this thread and realizes how much cause for concern this all is :/