Kendall's Story

This story is about former Help Force Staff member Kendall, also known as Sleepy:

I was in the Help Force for a little over a year and staff for about 10+ months. I was a really active troop back in 2019 and I made some friends and joked with the staff until eventually the Help Force Exodus happened. I ended up getting a staff position, General 5ic, awhile after the move to CPR. Help Force started to fall a bit and as most people know, a couping occurred.

After the couping of Spotty, there was a new leadership including Moon and Tistle. The Important person going forward right now in this story is Tistle’s part in his leadership span. Help Force has obviously changed but the most blunt part is the staff aspect, which started about half a year ago. Tistle would rarely be around in chat, and he would try to fix every problem by writing ends on ends of useless paragraphs. Some of these staff announcement paragraphs would be targeted towards me and another staff member, who recently retired. The screenshots below are of Tistle talking about us in staff announcements instead of confronting the issues with us personally. He would go on about our behaviour and all the shitty things we would do but in the end we were just having fun. Isn’t that the part of armies? To have fun? Or is it normal to be so strict and boring now?

I was stuck at the same rank for more than half a year, Marshal 4ic, because my promotion kept getting held out by Tistle. I was never told why I was nor how to improve to get better. Eventually I was talking to one of the HF staff and they decided to know the truth for themselves. As they were told before this, I was supported to be promoted in about two weeks, but that was said nearly a month before in those times. Here is the screenshot of conversation below of the reasons why I wasn’t “qualified”.

Many things are wrong with the reasonings, as far as trying to change my sleep schedule, even though we were in the middle of quarantine and my own personal problems go along hand in hand.

It doesn’t stop at that, Tistle would start comparing me to someone who has done such horrible things towards the Help Force, things I barely did as bad compared to that one person. It was a cruel insult, and he says it himself, though in no way it was nearly as comparable when you put the stories together. That one person would purposely ruin Help Force, while I would mess around and make it a fun place to be, not burn it to the ground. With background to what happened in this screenshot, me and Hannah would rename and recolor our BOOSTER roles that we paid money with to boost, and he would get rid of them. His complaint that we changed it too much and that we lied to everyone in general was clearly joking when I said “abused of our roles”, and nobody knew it was Tistle that did it. During that time, other staff members would change their booster role names/colors a ton of times as well, but when me and Hannah did it apparently we were in the wrong and ranted at it. The screenshots below are of him comparing us together with no hesitation, like that is the best way to solve the issue at the time.

At the time, Hannah would go ahead and DM Tistle on the real reason why he got so ticked off about the roles thing. To make it clear, me and Hannah were messing around and we are just a duo that goes along and does this stuff, but it had to become about Tistle. In the screenshot below, Tistle would go on about how I disobeyed him. He then ahead goes and compares me to that one person again that did way worse things.

There is no way to explain how Tistle feels about armies but be always talked about how boring it was, he was lazy, and he basically was never in chat at all. Tistle would bring Help Force to great maxes during the Legends Cup X but other than that, it was all garbage. Tistle eventually became more interested in another community called Penguin Saloon at the time when it was around. Instead of talking in Help Force, where he was leader, he would talk in Penguin Saloon all the time. There are countless screenshots of him talking about Penguin Saloon and basically praising it, in unbelievable ways. More noticeably is that some troops noticed as well.

  

In this screenshot, this was where Hannah asked where Tistle was because there was an invasion coming, as said in his very own name. Instead of taking over for the Help Force, he goes on and admits that he isn’t even paying attention to it at all. He would talk more and more in Penguin Saloon and suddenly seemed like he just vanished from ever talking in Help Force. And also being “busy” doing other things.

 

Tistle seemed to not know or forget when things were scheduled despite having the ability to take two seconds to look at any place within the server where it was either announced or discussed.

Tistle would put in place new staff rules, the one I will be focusing on is the swearing rule. This rule for staff was supposed to prevent staff arguments, which at the time was very common everyday between some staff. It worked at first but slowly over time it only caused more conflicts. When Tistle retired and ended up becoming an advisor for Help Force, he would swear like crazy. Every other sentence he would swear in front of us in staff chat when none of us could, not even advisors were supposed to.

Before he got advisor he said something about how none of the staff should swear, even though advisors count as “staff” but it clearly doesn’t apply to him. I would send screenshots of him swearing over and over again, but they would be endless, if you would like to see, just put his name in and any swear would he could say.

 

Even further to that point, he is a hypocrite on many levels, flooding/spamming being a rule for all people on the server of course. In the screenshot I will be showing, I copy and paste the same message three times which happened in staff chat and get told to not spam there. However, in general about less than a month after that moment occurred, Tistle has a sudden urge to start spamming the chat for whatever reason. 

 

 

Instead of spamming this time around, Tistle thought it would be funny to then flood chat with a bunch of big invisible messages. I would find a bunch of these invisible big messages in the message logs, there must have been 10+ as I said in the screenshot below. This also occurred during around the same time periods. These blank messages would take up about most of the Discord Chat so it would just be invisible.

 

Now that is enough attention towards Tistle. You get the point, it keeps going on and on with the same old, same old. When Barnito’s leadership happened it seemed to go smoothly, everything seemed fine. Once again staff conflicts happened, these further escalated and quickly evolved. Instead of making staff announcements, he thought it would be best to lie to me and tell me that I was going to take a “break”, when really he was demoting me. The screenshots below will contain the conversation about me taking a “break”. 

 

I ended up coming back less than a week after, as I had taken a break from Discord. Hannah at the time was Chief, 2ic, she wasn’t told about me actually getting demoted. So she thought it was able to get my Admiral (3ic) rank back and she gave it back to me. Momentarily after that, Hannah would get a DM from Barnito going on about how even though I came back from my “break”, I wasn’t allowed to get my rank back. Keep in mind that Barnito never once DMed me after Hannah eventually took off my Admiral role and me coming back after my “break”. In the screenshot of their conversation below, apparently I would need to basically mini moderate with no staff rank, quite weird to think about right? Not only would that seem weird for me to be doing, how would other people think about me acting that way?

A little background on why I had to take a “break” why the way. There were inner staff inflicts which shouldn’t be surprising by now. The staff is so divided now, it seems like it’s our staff vs our staff, instead of army vs army. The Help Force might not have been in any big conflicts between any other armies, but under the scenes that is where all the hell happened. Some staff couldn’t accept the truth when I would speak my mind and not sugar coat everything that would be going on. It was obvious at this time, that our personalities were clashing at that moment of time; however, like always I was blamed for it all. Some staff would become more strict and limit the fun level so low it felt like a prison. I would try to give Barnito’s suggestions on how to make Help Force a nicer and more fun place. I even gave him a real situation of how someone felt towards the Help Force and their view on it. He brushed it off and decided not to listen to anything I was trying to say. Isn’t that a little bit odd because at the time I was 3ic and my opinion should matter?

Even more about how inexperienced some of our staff are, it seems to be a pattern that either you get promoted really quickly, or really late. It is extremely biased and it makes no sense because most of these people promoted quickly, are too new and not ready at all. And other staff members would be held back for months too late and end up staying the same rank for over half a year. Barnito admitted to it on the staff server to our other admiral (3ic), Nelly when she was asking questions about the Halloween Branch Battle. In the screenshot below, he seems to be talking about how Nelly should know all this BB stuff; and not need to ask so many questions because she is a 3ic.

Also despite me being 3ic, the second highest rank with another person beside me, I was never told anything. The leader gc we had was completely dead, no communication, nothing. I always felt like I was being left in the dark for whatever reason and I never understood why we could never communicate as staff members on how to make Help Force a better army. Including on that note, apparently there were also issues people would have about the “questionable” things I would do. I never once knew people felt this way about me until I recently saw these screenshots that were shared with me. I never understood why people who had problems with me, never just went ahead and DMed me instead of DMing every other staff member beside me.

These could go on forever, but you get the obvious point. The rest of the screenshots will be included in Dawn’s story as well, since during this time period, they both connected to each other. It felt like a war with each other, and I’m not saying that listening to troops is bad but why do they get to decide if someone gets demoted? They shouldn’t have authority over us when they won’t tell their problem to me personally instead of passing it around like a messenger. Which in fact I find it more mature finding out that they are complete adults fighting over TEENAGERS. How sad does that sound? Adults shaming and being on teenagers asses over a penguin army game, for what? What are they getting out of this?

Barnito did indeed say that he was going to change up the rules about swearing, in staff chat mostly; however, he never ended up following through on his promise. He compared to what I was saying when I got demoted to what wouldn’t be allowed. (I wasn’t in the right mindset but again I did just get demoted with being told I was taking a “break”). But I still feel as if the example was a little much to show as I wasn’t even staff during that time period. The screenshots below will explain what Barnito will be talking about swearing. None of these things ended up happening and no new rules were set, basically got nowhere with this.

Barnito also talked about himself, how he knows how it feels to be “chained” up, most likely during the time period Tistle was leader. If he felt chained up, why would he continue to keep the rules the way they are right now? The set of rules Tistle put in place are the main reason why most of these things went down, and repercussions carrying on.

Despite being the highest and longest staff during when this happened (excluding Barnito), people treated me as I was less than them and as I had no idea what I was doing. Keep in mind, this is a penguin game meant for kids, why are we making it so strict? Isn’t the point of this to have fun after all? They make it seem like it is some life or death thing that we HAVE to do otherwise, and the fact they are so stern on trying to change our personalities. I felt pissed that I kept getting stepped on by less experienced staff members who “know” more than I do, as if everything I did was worthless. Never once have I felt more hurt than how I was during staff in Help Force, the amount of cruelty and hostility between each other is indescribable.

My decision up to leaving Help Force has basically included everything I have said in my story. Actually, I've been wanting to retire since about half a year ago, during Tistle’s leadership. However I stayed, not for myself but for my friends and for the Creator of Help Force. But it gets to the point where I can no longer handle this cruel treatment towards me and feel as if I am completely worthless and just a problem. Being in the Help Force for a year and this becoming my ending where I officially leave the army community, could never have been predicted in my past. My decision to retire was my own and I have my own mind and story to explain all the horrible lies that the staff team is hiding. Knowing them they will cover this story up or pretend as if it never happened. All I wanted all the other members to know is how the Help Force is really like behind the scenes, and the amount of individual destruction they already inflicted. I personally want Help Force to improve from this point on and not for this treatment and destruction to happen again. This community has a chance to be greater in the future if they really aim for it and make the changes needed. This is what this whole post is about, tell out our stories and learn from them, not repeating the past again. 

 Click on each link to read more:

Introduction | Kendall's Story | Lafille's Story | Dawn's Story | Anon's Story | Conclusion