I'm breaking the collaboration between myself and b4nny for my map, Cardinal, as well as departing from competitive TF2 as a whole. I figured you all deserve to know what's going on.
I will still be updating this map to see it out, but working with the community as a whole has drawn to an end for me. I really don't want to leave, as the 5cp 6v6 gamemode is the single most interesting version of TF2 to make my maps for – but I don't feel like I can stay any longer. I won't be making any more competitively-focused maps.
Thank you for all the feedback, help, and opportunities. I wish I could stay around for just those aspects and not everything else I encounter.
It's no specific incident that created this, just a long stream of constant negative experiences that made me slowly move further and further away from the community. What made me decide to break it off now was just a culmination of everything.
I've been experiencing harassment due to being trans ever since Sunshine became popular. If you've ever wondered why I never show up on any streams, or interviews about my maps, even though I've been offered multiple times... that's why. I keep myself distant because I know so many people in this community hate my guts. Not because of what I do, but who I am; and I know this from what I see.
The recent events happening involving multiple specific high-level players, alongside the responses made from certain others, lead me to fully understand this is not a scene which I want to be in. Nothing was specifically targeted at me as an individual, but trans harm affects all trans people. I see no desire by the top players themselves to improve the community, only the messed-up moral high ground they poise themselves on, claiming that the publicity being given to these issues is 'bad professionalism'.
I don't gain anything from this. Hell, I'd be better off if I left silently, without a word, quietly updating my maps until they completed, then vanishing. I vanish enough as it is; it wouldn't be hard. I lose access to testing, connections to Valve, and immensely valuable feedback. I am voluntarily withdrawing from the competitive TF2 community not because I gain social points for doing so, but because of people who neglect to care about attempts to bring to light deep-seated issues in the scene. I am withdrawing because I do not feel like the scene will ever learn to care about people like me.
Please, if you're a top-level player and you disagree with your comrades, perhaps you should speak up instead of letting them speak for you.
Peace.