Berrod Armstrong, smiting in Rhalgr's name. Art by yours truly!

There is a story I need to tell you. It’s a story that involves not only me, but many others. Over the past couple weeks I have spent a great deal of time listening, watching, and at times speaking. And now, after witnessing the whole of what I’ve seen, I have come to the conclusion that this post must be written. For it is through the enforcement of silence that the bad actors in this situation control their victims, and I cannot remain silent anymore.

Kale Aideron is a serial sexual harasser, and not only have the moderators of Gold & Glory <G&G> willingly enabled his behavior, but they also have used manipulative abusive tactics to silence and control their membership when they try to speak up or get out.

In this post, you will see a great deal of screenshots and testimony. These have been shared with permission.

To begin, I am going to walk you through Kale’s behavior and break down his pattern. And as this post continues, I will discuss how the G&G moderators enabled him, then break down the behavior of the G&G moderators themselves.

[As a note this post contains descriptions of sexual abuse and harassment]

Keep reading

If y'all weren’t already aware of why Kale Aideron has the rep he does, and admits he does, or why he is disliked in general, this is a complete post with EXTENSIVE evidence and explanations about his sexual harassment and manipulative behavior. This post also includes evidence and explanation on the leadership of the FC G&G and how they facilitated his behavior and acted on their own as a heinous environment

I just want to say, please believe these ladies, because they are telling the truth. I have had near identical experiences with Kale as Sylb has described. With Kale and I both being very active RPers since the beginning 2.0 and both running events and FC’s, I’ve bumped into him a lot, worked with him on an event, and known him for a very long time. While we’ve never been particularly close, when we got to talking, it was immediately a discomfort to me. He would ask about my thoughts on ERP and my approach to it–seemingly fishing for me to tell him I wanted to ERP with him. He was always dissatisfied with my answers and pressed for more details and more explanations. He also began to randomly ask me really specific questions regarding how I would feel on certain situations with my expertise “as a woman.” It always seemed like he was trying to get me to agree to a certain viewpoint to help him justify something. And rarely would I express to him the opinion he wanted to hear. As Sylb says, he’d seem a little disgruntled and abruptly change the subject. It always felt like he was poking at my boundaries, but I didn’t budge on them, and even got a bit snippy at times when I was frustrated with his questions that always felt like they had some ulterior motives. This pattern continued for months. I don’t know if this turned him off or if it was just coincidence, but he began speaking to me less and less, and I was A-okay with that. Meanwhile, I heard of how he treated a couple other women in the community, and I heard him vaguely mention his bad reputation once or twice (a reputation I figured he’d probably earned) in the context of him claiming to have improved. I see that improvement obviously didn’t happen. I’m disappointed to hear there were even more women he’s creeped on, disappointed to find out this behavior has gone on since back in WoW, but most of all disappointed to find out trusted and respected people in the community enabled this. I have done events with Gold and Glory (as recently as last week) and know a lot of great people there. I had no idea this was happening and it’s really disheartening Ultimately, I never cut ties with Kale (though maybe I should have to spare @its-the-val-pal all my bitching whenever Kale pressed his luck with me lol), because I’m very fortunate it didn’t escalate quite to the levels of these other stories. To me, he was just a creep barking up the wrong tree; something I’ve sadly dealt with enough times before and was confident I could handle. The more I brushed him off, the less he messaged me, so I didn’t see the need for further action. But I fully understand and support anyone else who suffered his behavior to do more than that, to block him, to avoid him, to report him to whoever can hold him accountable. To me, the most unsettling part of this story is how someone who was understandably trying to do just that was treated because of it, especially by people who acted to her face as if there were no concerns on their end.

With all these other updates of creeps returning to the game, it’s worth noting Kale is still playing and has namechanged to Khaleed Quartzwall.

I’m resurrecting this post from the grave because this player is still around and still doing this shit as Khaleed Quartzwall. Ask me how I know! Just kidding, I bet you can guess.

Hi Theo (astralera),

This is you right?

Right-click -> Open image in new tab for full resolution

You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to weaponize this post against me when you yourself don’t even agree with any of it. I was upfront and honest with you about everything when we started to RP. You were accepting and for you to throw it back in my face is disgusting. It is is absolutely abhorrent you would try to use the experiences of others (who you laughed and jeered at) to attack me.

It has been almost 3 years, and I wanted to say that I acted on what the community called me out on by not having a single negative testimony to my name. Indeed, the only other thing on this tumblr blog is the original apology from January 2019. Every new prospective long-term friend I make in FFXIV, I encourage them to Google my in-game name to have a read of Ojene’s original post and decide for themselves whether they want to associate with me. This is how you (Theodora) discovered this OP in the first place. The fact I am reblogging the original post that called me out should hopefully be a clear indication of my transparency on this topic.

I am sorry that our friendship didn’t work out and things just seemed to go sour because of differing personalities or expectations. However, this is unacceptable, so I will let others see what you originally thought of the OP way back in June 2021. If you didn’t want to RP or PvE with me anymore, you just had to say so, not resort to this.

Later,

@kommanderkale I know you thought this was a cute response, but the truth was that I didn’t get the full truth until recently. Certain things have come to light that made the original post much more understandable to me.

You really should include the parts of your screenshots where you “explained” things to me to make the OP seem unreasonable which prompted some of my doubt. I trusted your information which I have come to find out was untrue. I am pretty sure that anyone who has ever extensively dealt with you knows what it is like to be lied to and manipulated.

Addendum: The termination of our contact was clear prior to this, so please do not act as if you were unaware of me no longer being interested in RP or PvE any longer. You were already blocked on Discord following our final conversation.

To anyone I doubted, I am sorry that I did and I will own that mistake (no matter how misled I was by the guilty party), but I am pretty sure all of you with experience understand what it is like to deal with him and his endless attempts to violate boundaries. If anyone’s curious, you can hit me up. We’ll chat.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

You know, when I saw these additions cross my notes I didn’t feel a need to comment. I don’t actively post on Tumblr much these days, and by the time I saw the conversation it had run its course. But then on 12/1, I received this:

The post Kale (Khaleed) linked to me is from 11/13/2021 (just a few days after the above conversation), but I’m not going to dignify it by responding directly to it. Instead you can find it in screenshots below the “read more” link.

What’s truly remarkable about this to me is that three years later, in everything Kale (Khaleed) has just said and done he’s repeating the exact patterns we identified in the original call-out post. I’m not surprised to learn that he’s still up to his old tricks, given the fact that he’s been doing this over and over for years, but I do think it’s important to point out how his actions today repeat the same cycles, which I will do past the jump.

The fact that this man continues to accuse me of “opportunism” is absolutely revolting. I have already made my apology to those I disbelieved; what “opportunity” does this man think I am seizing by speaking up?

Oh, it’s the famous “women who claim to be victims just want attention”. Of course it could never be that I spoke up at great personal risk of this kind of continued harassment and smear campaigning from someone who has proven himself for years to do exactly that to anyone who has cause to feel badly treated.

I put my trust in someone who did not deserve it, who then went on to exploit that trust by constantly and repeatedly battering at my boundaries. The fact that I received this vitriol from this man for merely reblogging a post and adding that he was still up to his same old tricks (if it is not obvious to everyone reading at this point) should be more than enough to prove that he was scared and worried and absolutely rushed to smear my name and throw doubt on me.

What he doesn’t understand is that I don’t fucking care. It’s not about me. It’s about those I didn’t believe who deserve to have their stories shared and to have support in that regard. @diskwrite-ffxiv has done a great service in taking the time to put all this together. I am personally grateful for what they have done and I encourage anyone to read their thoughtful assessments of the matter.

It doesn’t matter what you think of me. If merely agreeing with someone else’s opinion after seeing the behavior firsthand was enough to cause this man to do this to me, I can only imagine what else he is capable of.

Pretty sure making the premeditated choice to take screenshots of a conversation rp partner taking your side so that you can use it to discredit her later when she leaves you is called entrapment, Kale. Cropping your side of the conversation doesn’t make it less obvious.

Glad to know you haven’t changed one bit.

Sorry you had to put up with him, astralera.

No, dude. She didn’t “leave” me. I’m the one that cut things off with her and put her on block after saying I couldn’t foresee anything improving. You’d know this, if @astralera posted any actual evidence of sexual harassment rather than just write a whole lot of nothing 3 times.

Every time I engage with this, I draw attention to the original post. It’s the only thing on this blog. I’m not even denying anything in the 3-year-old OP. I’m specifically highlighting that @astralera​ had absolutely nothing to do with it. If she did, she’d post receipts already.

There’s a difference between someone who engages in sexual harassment because they are sinister, plotting, and conniving versus someone who engages in it because they can’t read the room, pick up on social cues, and respect boundaries. Frankly, I’m not intelligent enough to be sinister anything.

“There’s a difference between someone who engages in sexual harassment because they are sinister, plotting, and conniving versus someone who engages in it because they can’t read the room, pick up on social cues, and respect boundaries. Frankly, I’m not intelligent enough to be sinister anything.”

There’s a similarity between them too. They both involve sexual harassment, which is bad – no matter how one tries to justify it (which in itself is an abhorrent stance), no matter how much reality-altering stupidity one may be afflicted by (or chooses to employ, honestly).

If you’re not intelligent enough to be sinister anything, allow me in my finite wisdom to impart unto you a lesson.

You will never get away with this bullshit here again. It’s time to stop.

Astralera, I’m sorry you had to deal with this, with him. You’re not alone. More people see than you realise, and we’re with you.

Kale DMed me again before these responses too:

This manipulation attempt is so baldly transparent it's breathtaking. Just in the last message he said he wasn't going to "patronize me" by trying to "convince me about astralera's opportunism", and then what does he do the moment I respond? This.

I said it once and I'll say it again. Everything Kale is doing in this thread mirrors the exact things we documented in the above 2019 posts.

And then this statement, that Berrod also picked out?

This right here is exactly how Kale functions. He wants you to believe that he genuinely just doesn't understand people's boundaries, that he doesn't know when he's crossing lines. Or that he's not smart or savvy enough to be doing any of this on purpose.

I have four things to say to that.

1) People who genuinely don't understand how boundaries work step on everyone's boundaries. They do it to men, women, and everyone else. If someone is a creep to women but conveniently tucks it all away in front of men, they know exactly what they're doing.

2) Kale is very good at skating just on the line of plausible deniability, probing at the edges of people's boundaries. Someone who doesn't understand boundaries won't be able to do that- they simply burst through boundaries like the Kool-aid man.

3) Kale obviously understands how not to creep on women, because despite the fact that for a time we interacted on a semi-regular basis, he never violated my boundaries. But he violated Sylb's boundaries during that same time period, as shown in the original 2019 post.

4) If Kale is somehow doing all of this "unintentionally" as he claims, that makes him no less dangerous. And really, that's the most important point of all.

Also, can I just say: considering I blocked you on Discord back when the callout post happened in 2019, the fact that you've circumvented that twice now by DMing me on Tumblr to send me this is pretty weird, Kale.

There is a story I need to tell you. It’s a story that involves not only me, but many others. Over the past couple weeks I have spent a great deal of time listening, watching, and at times speaking. And now, after witnessing the whole of what I’ve seen, I have come to the conclusion that this post must be written. For it is through the enforcement of silence that the bad actors in this situation control their victims, and I cannot remain silent anymore.

Kale Aideron is a serial sexual harasser, and not only have the moderators of Gold & Glory <G&G> willingly enabled his behavior, but they also have used manipulative abusive tactics to silence and control their membership when they try to speak up or get out.

In this post, you will see a great deal of screenshots and testimony. These have been shared with permission.

To begin, I am going to walk you through Kale’s behavior and break down his pattern. And as this post continues, I will discuss how the G&G moderators enabled him, then break down the behavior of the G&G moderators themselves.

[As a note this post contains descriptions of sexual abuse and harassment]

Keep reading

If y'all weren’t already aware of why Kale Aideron has the rep he does, and admits he does, or why he is disliked in general, this is a complete post with EXTENSIVE evidence and explanations about his sexual harassment and manipulative behavior. This post also includes evidence and explanation on the leadership of the FC G&G and how they facilitated his behavior and acted on their own as a heinous environment

I just want to say, please believe these ladies, because they are telling the truth. I have had near identical experiences with Kale as Sylb has described. With Kale and I both being very active RPers since the beginning 2.0 and both running events and FC’s, I’ve bumped into him a lot, worked with him on an event, and known him for a very long time. While we’ve never been particularly close, when we got to talking, it was immediately a discomfort to me. He would ask about my thoughts on ERP and my approach to it–seemingly fishing for me to tell him I wanted to ERP with him. He was always dissatisfied with my answers and pressed for more details and more explanations. He also began to randomly ask me really specific questions regarding how I would feel on certain situations with my expertise “as a woman.” It always seemed like he was trying to get me to agree to a certain viewpoint to help him justify something. And rarely would I express to him the opinion he wanted to hear. As Sylb says, he’d seem a little disgruntled and abruptly change the subject. It always felt like he was poking at my boundaries, but I didn’t budge on them, and even got a bit snippy at times when I was frustrated with his questions that always felt like they had some ulterior motives. This pattern continued for months. I don’t know if this turned him off or if it was just coincidence, but he began speaking to me less and less, and I was A-okay with that. Meanwhile, I heard of how he treated a couple other women in the community, and I heard him vaguely mention his bad reputation once or twice (a reputation I figured he’d probably earned) in the context of him claiming to have improved. I see that improvement obviously didn’t happen. I’m disappointed to hear there were even more women he’s creeped on, disappointed to find out this behavior has gone on since back in WoW, but most of all disappointed to find out trusted and respected people in the community enabled this. I have done events with Gold and Glory (as recently as last week) and know a lot of great people there. I had no idea this was happening and it’s really disheartening Ultimately, I never cut ties with Kale (though maybe I should have to spare @its-the-val-pal all my bitching whenever Kale pressed his luck with me lol), because I’m very fortunate it didn’t escalate quite to the levels of these other stories. To me, he was just a creep barking up the wrong tree; something I’ve sadly dealt with enough times before and was confident I could handle. The more I brushed him off, the less he messaged me, so I didn’t see the need for further action. But I fully understand and support anyone else who suffered his behavior to do more than that, to block him, to avoid him, to report him to whoever can hold him accountable. To me, the most unsettling part of this story is how someone who was understandably trying to do just that was treated because of it, especially by people who acted to her face as if there were no concerns on their end.

With all these other updates of creeps returning to the game, it’s worth noting Kale is still playing and has namechanged to Khaleed Quartzwall.

I’m resurrecting this post from the grave because this player is still around and still doing this shit as Khaleed Quartzwall. Ask me how I know! Just kidding, I bet you can guess.

Hi Theo (astralera),

This is you right?

Right-click -> Open image in new tab for full resolution

You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to weaponize this post against me when you yourself don’t even agree with any of it. I was upfront and honest with you about everything when we started to RP. You were accepting and for you to throw it back in my face is disgusting. It is is absolutely abhorrent you would try to use the experiences of others (who you laughed and jeered at) to attack me.

It has been almost 3 years, and I wanted to say that I acted on what the community called me out on by not having a single negative testimony to my name. Indeed, the only other thing on this tumblr blog is the original apology from January 2019. Every new prospective long-term friend I make in FFXIV, I encourage them to Google my in-game name to have a read of Ojene’s original post and decide for themselves whether they want to associate with me. This is how you (Theodora) discovered this OP in the first place. The fact I am reblogging the original post that called me out should hopefully be a clear indication of my transparency on this topic.

I am sorry that our friendship didn’t work out and things just seemed to go sour because of differing personalities or expectations. However, this is unacceptable, so I will let others see what you originally thought of the OP way back in June 2021. If you didn’t want to RP or PvE with me anymore, you just had to say so, not resort to this.

Later,

@kommanderkale I know you thought this was a cute response, but the truth was that I didn’t get the full truth until recently. Certain things have come to light that made the original post much more understandable to me.

You really should include the parts of your screenshots where you “explained” things to me to make the OP seem unreasonable which prompted some of my doubt. I trusted your information which I have come to find out was untrue. I am pretty sure that anyone who has ever extensively dealt with you knows what it is like to be lied to and manipulated.

Addendum: The termination of our contact was clear prior to this, so please do not act as if you were unaware of me no longer being interested in RP or PvE any longer. You were already blocked on Discord following our final conversation.

To anyone I doubted, I am sorry that I did and I will own that mistake (no matter how misled I was by the guilty party), but I am pretty sure all of you with experience understand what it is like to deal with him and his endless attempts to violate boundaries. If anyone’s curious, you can hit me up. We’ll chat.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

You know, when I saw these additions cross my notes I didn’t feel a need to comment. I don’t actively post on Tumblr much these days, and by the time I saw the conversation it had run its course. But then on 12/1, I received this:

The post Kale (Khaleed) linked to me is from 11/13/2021 (just a few days after the above conversation), but I’m not going to dignify it by responding directly to it. Instead you can find it in screenshots below the “read more” link.

What’s truly remarkable about this to me is that three years later, in everything Kale (Khaleed) has just said and done he’s repeating the exact patterns we identified in the original call-out post. I’m not surprised to learn that he’s still up to his old tricks, given the fact that he’s been doing this over and over for years, but I do think it’s important to point out how his actions today repeat the same cycles, which I will do past the jump.