Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[SilenceIsViolence]

Apparently Xeno has stated that he can prove that this guy knows his statements are false -- I'm not really interested in sitting through several hour long videos.

I watched the stream live and artistically went through all the legal docs and couldn't find anything concrete, but I may have missed something. The videos are not worth watching, it's a lot of rambling from both parties. Better off reading through the legal docs/google doc yourself if you enjoy schizoposts, and if you don't, it's a total waste of time. The VM transcription I posted is probably the most deranged of it.

The courts don't care if you believe your own claims, they care if those claims have substance and evidence indicating that those claims are true and in Massachusetts, if you making those claims aren't damaging the livelihood of the person you're making those accusations about which Xeems says that he can prove that he actually lost income because of Lionel's sperging

I'm not really sure what definition of defamation you're working with here, but there's three big elements to the MA interpretation.

Scroll down in your link and you'll see Public officials have a different set of rules apply to them than normal civilians. Maybe Mass is unique, but usually Public Figures fall under needing "actual malice" too - Because Xeemo is a public figure, he would have to prove "actual malice" which requires:

1. Statement to be provably false
2. The perpetrator needs to know it's false
3. It needs to be delivered to people.
4. Harm, or as you said, loss of income

1 and 3 are easy enough, 2 I think they would struggle with, as almost all cases of defamation of public figures do. It would take something along the lines of Lionel being on the record saying "what I am saying about Xeno is false and I am doing so to ruin his reputation" which he never comes close to. This is the nail in the coffin for most of these cases.

I think 4 is hard to prove as well, as Lionel has sub 200 subs and basically no online presence. There would of had to be some sort of noticeable dip in income from these statements which I doubt Xeems can prove because I doubt it ever happened. If he was rejected from sponsorships because of Lionels ramblings, maybe, but even then with mulitple parties reporting on things like the Sudsy story, it would be hard to pinpoint the loss of income on Lionel alone.

Maybe Mass is unique, but I would expect this to be the same there, I'm just going off of google.

 

[Black Willow Lurker]

I blame targeting shit in general for this, but I can also improve my HUD some to allow me to click at a party member as quickly as I can tap a key to then mash that teleport button and back.

I know that's heresy, but what works really well are target macros. I use a "general-purpose"

/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <mo>

which moves you to mouseover'd party member, and

/ac "Aetherial Manipulation" <focus>

to go to focus target, which is typically a tank in normal content (since they tend to be in a safe spot when these half-room AOEs start flying around), and your "buddy" in raids. The 2 problems with that is macros don't queue ("solved" by plugins, if you're not averse to that), and the lack of a "I don't care, just pick the closest party member to my mouse position", because bosses are huge fucking assholes.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Public officials have a different set of rules apply to them than normal civilians. Maybe Mass is unique, but usually Public Figures

Public officials aren't synonymous with public figures - public officials are like... mayor, city commissioner, etc.
Now maybe this guy has been elected to the office of BALD, but I somehow doubt it; it doesn't cover him. The only mention of figures as distinct regards the substantial truth qualm there, which doesn't really apply here.

Not that it matters here, but the question as to whether streamers are considered public figures is an interesting one. You can say he voluntarily put himself in the public view in order to earn a living, sure, but does that mean that every rinkadink musician qualifies? Every entertainer on the planet is considered a public figure? Is there a threshold by which it begins to apply?

The definition has been pretty rickety since NYT v Sullivan, and further extrapolations on it have been pretty touch-and-go. Personally? I would argue against the idea that this guy is a public figure - perhaps 99.9% of the country has no idea of who he is for any reason, and he's got no more notoriety than a guy at a comedy club open mic in a major metro.

At best you could maybe argue that he's a limited-purpose public figure with regards to FF14 'content,' and so if his... stellar knowledge of the game was somehow impugned, you could argue that would not be a statement made with clear malice. Calling him a nonce, beyond almost-always amounting to defamation-per-se (mass rolls this into normal defamation), also doesn't really overlap with his limited scope as a FF14 personality. And all that besides, I really think that the court would pretty flatly reject these and argue that the litigant is a private figure.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

It's hard to gauge how well Lionel's defense could be if he never put up a fight to begin with and usually most of the time when you don't fight back, that's an admittance that your accusations have no basis or merit. I'll go down the points you brought up and give a blurb about why I think the court would rule in favor of Xeems or not.

1. Statement to be provably false

Lionel accused Xeems of being a groomer and a pedo and of sexually assaulting women. All the women that Lionel claims to be victims of Xeems came forward with written statements asserting that Lionel's accusations are false. On top of that, they provide proof of his own harassment of them. At some point it's revealed that Lionel himself tells one of Xeems' supposed victims that "everything" he said about her wasn't true. (I'm not sure if the court would be able to tell what exactly Lionel means by this. If he means that what he's saying Xeems did to her isn't true or something else.)

2. The perpetrator needs to know it's false

Xeems' proof for this is that Lionel goes on to harass and attack the women he claimed were his victims by calling them "meatbags to fuck" and "living fleshlights". Those aren't things you say about a person who you believe was victimized. Neither is wishing them further harm by hoping that they're raped for realisies because you know they weren't victims to begin with. Also those 7 years he spent sperging in his autistic 115 videos about Xeems is all time he could have used to gather actual evidence to pin on Xeems if he truly believed he committed crimes. You go to the police, you don't go and make 115 youtube videos calling him a criminal. Because even if he was right, he would just be allowing a criminal to roam free for no reason. Pretty hard to prove that you actually believed he commited crimes while making no effort to get him behind bars and actively and quite maliciously attacking his supposed victims.

3. It needs to be delivered to people.

This is obvious. He's made 115 youtube videos of autistic sperging about Xeems that were available to the public and he's made multiple burner accounts on twitter to further harass Xeems and his "victims" and anyone who associates with them as well as doing the same in public discord servers. All of this is public.

4. Harm, or as you said, loss of income

This is what I would consider the most shaky because even though Xeems is a streamer and is frequently on social media, he doesn't have the large audience or fame of someone like a celebrity. Supposedly Xeems says he can prove this but I have not seen it yet so I can't comment on damages as of yet. You make the good argument that Lionel's a nobody and that he's so irrelevant that even over the course of 7 years, he wouldn't be able to inflict any meaningful harm on his income and reputation. My best counter to that is that Lionel isn't the only person who's accused Xeems of being a pedophile rapist. A certain other retard by the name of SleepyRaijin also parroted Lionel's same accusations. Maaaaybe a connection could be formed between the two but admittedly, this argument is very weak unless something more substantial is shown. This would be the one time where if the court ruled against Xeems I will concede defeat.

@Rich Evans Ayypologist I meant in that the victory feels more meaningful if you're able to trounce your opponent after they put up a fight because at least you would know without a shadow of a doubt that Xeems was right about everything after the court was able to listen and see things form both sides. Allowing Xeems to win by default just means Lionel lost because he let himself lose. If that makes any sense.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

snip

That all makes sense to me, I think limited-purpose public figure makes the most sense here, though I do think he would definitely be considered one. Looking at McKee v. Cosby, McKee was considered a limited-public figure simply for engaging with the media around the Cosby case. I don't know how you really make an argument that he isn't a limited-public figure - he is more than just a FF14 creator, he covers drama+controversies and a variety of other games on his channel. Simply by engaging with the public on FF14 drama, I think there's a solid case here to say he's a limited public figure.

You can say he voluntarily put himself in the public view in order to earn a living, sure, but does that mean that every rinkadink musician qualifies? Every entertainer on the planet is considered a public figure? Is there a threshold by which it begins to apply?

I think this ultimately comes down to which party has better lawyers and more money and not a firm definition. I could see it going either way depending on the plaintiff/defendant.

But I'll admit, you seem to know more than me on this, I write code not laws (thank god), so I am out of my element.

Hopefully people like llamatodd take on Lionel in court next so the lulz continue. The makings of a lolcow are here if Lionel generalized his attacks and rants outside of 14.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

Sorry to double post but @Dopey Cunt posted as I was writing the previous one.

Xeems' proof for this is that Lionel goes on to harass and attack the women he claimed were his victims by calling them "meatbags to fuck" and "living fleshlights". Those aren't things you say about a person who you believe was victimized.

I would say this is subjective. I can call Biden a worthless retard and say I hope he dies, yet still believe he is innocent when it comes to a false accusation. One doesn't directly imply the other; It's possible that they genuinely believe in the accusations but express themselves in an abusive manner due to "personal animosity" or just being a pyscho.

so those 7 years he spent sperging in his autistic 115 videos about Xeems is all time he could have used to gather actual evidence to pin on Xeems if he truly believed he committed crimes. You go to the police, you don't go and make 115 youtube videos calling him a criminal. Because even if he was right, he would just be allowing a criminal to roam free for no reason. Pretty hard to prove that you actually believed he commited crimes while making no effort to get him behind bars and actively and quite maliciously attacking his supposed victims.

While I agree, it still isn't indicative of him knowingly lying. He could argue a fear of repercussion from reporting this crime or that public perception was/is more powerful than the legal system.

Totally agree with everything in points 1,3 and 4 though. I just know that, without a very direct admission of knowing it's false, there's a ton of ways to argue away his knowledge of falsehoods. IMO, listening to his rants, he seems like he believes everything he is spewing. He seems like the type of guy who could look at a red square, say it's a green triangle and pass a lie detector test for it.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Holy shit.

I just read the transcripts and heard the insane schizo voicemails Lionel left Xeems' lawyer and good God.

What this kid needs isn't jail time, he needs a fucking bullet to the skull to put him out of his misery.

Here is Lionel's character btw:
Julian Casablancas

He apparently has another character named Howard Moon but I dunno if it's 2 separate characters or if Julian was previously Howard. In any case, Julian appears to be his main. He had a short stint being part of world first parties before he was blacklisted for being shit and an unhinged lunatic.

 

[Spilled Spaghett]

Pretty fucking much this echoed to the fucking heavens.

The lack of synergy between jobs (and secondary utility) feels like such missed opportunity, when the game is literally an MMO. The closest we get to this is Dancers using the partner ability to buff a single other party member, which is a great feature but could be expanded upon further. Hell, one of the first things I thought of was "why isn't there synergy between Bards and Dancers if they're in the same party?"

The franchise has had plenty of instances of party members working together for greater options. Off the top my head I think of Steiner and Vivi from FF9 where having both in the team grants access to ridiculously overpowered spellblades to Steiner.

If the game had more of this, you'd actively encourage people to play different jobs I think, because you'd want to try different combinations in random content to spice up your gameplay. On top of that utility (healers having more buff or debuff actions that aren't just "increase damage for 10s", or perhaps the return of multiple tank stances, something I didn't experience myself but could be reworked to be enticing).

I can understand job specific synergies is a lot to balance, but even if they just did it per role, and bringing one of each role is expected of you now anyways, that would still help you to feel like what you are doing in your party is unique. I always found it strange that, for a game which lets you switch to any job at any time, they don't encourage you to play multiple jobs. Even if some fights are catered to one pair over the other, I think as long as across the tier you cover them all in some way people wont be left out. After all if you can only gear out one job at a time in prog you can't tell someone not to play Bard if you're going to need him on the tier 3 fight.

I wouldn't expect them to have an intricate system of fight mechanics and job interactions in the next expansion or two. But this is the kind of thing you expected them to have already been building towards over 5 expansions. Instead we're still rediscovering how to make video games interactive. Even if we do nothing with job interactions at first I would kill to at least have more environmental interactions. Give me more than a plain flat disk that only exists as a DDR pad. Even the little switch in the Leviathan figth back in ARR is at least something. Would've been even cooler if the railing had health bars you had to keep the adds away from instead of them all breaking because phase 2 started. Alexander had some cool fights that had some switches, and potions, and even a Gobwalker. I know the Alex tiers had some issues but it really does seem that whenever SE tried something, and it doesn't work the first time, they would give up instead of iterating and improving.

 

[Kheapathic]

Finally caught the Snowy Parexus (seriously, fuck that fish, I'll start a tire fire in a lake in its honor); down to Cinder Surprise, Furcacauda which I have done at least 50 fucking windows on and still nothing, and the Sidereal Whale; which despite being the big fishing bad of Endwalker, seriously doesn't burn me as much as some others do. I'm also pretty pissed that the last maintenance interrupted a Cinder window.

 

[Well Intentioned]

Finally caught the Snowy Parexus (seriously, fuck that fish, I'll start a tire fire in a lake in its honor); down to Cinder Surprise, Furcacauda which I have done at least 50 fucking windows on and still nothing, and the Sidereal Whale; which despite being the big fishing bad of Endwalker, seriously doesn't burn me as much as some others do. I'm also pretty pissed that the last maintenance interrupted a Cinder window.

I dunno if you're going for the Ocean Fish, but be prepared for endless frustration if you are. Parexus is basically a legendary Ocean Fishing fish.

Whale is just annoying because one of the required fish isn't guaranteed, so you have to devote a chunk of time ensuring you've caught it.

 

[Kheapathic]

I dunno if you're going for the Ocean Fish, but be prepared for endless frustration if you are. Parexus is basically a legendary Ocean Fishing fish.

Whale is just annoying because one of the required fish isn't guaranteed, so you have to devote a chunk of time ensuring you've caught it.

I'm trying to find a full group for the Ocean fishing stuff to get the max Shark/Jellyfish/Etc. And I know about the Whale, I've already have a number of windows under my belt. It's just caused me less grief than Parexus has.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I'm trying to find a full group for the Ocean fishing stuff to get the max Shark/Jellyfish/Etc. And I know about the Whale, I've already have a number of windows under my belt. It's just caused me less grief than Parexus has.

Your best bet is on the Fishing discord server, where people will toss up parties for Ocean Fishing.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

Holy shit.

I just read the transcripts and heard the insane schizo voicemails Lionel left Xeems' lawyer and good God.

Yup, the transcripts were what made me write up the whole post - sperging about XIV creators on YT is one thing, delivering violent threats to a lawyer and their family who is actively litigating against you is beyond insane.

https://www.fflogs.com/character/na/gilgamesh/julian%20casablancas

Good parses, but no TOP clear; guess he got Zepla'd out of it. Pretty sure Howard Moon changed into Julian but I haven't been able to find any solid confirmation of that - he does have a PSA about Howard Moon on the blog of Julian so I think that's as close to confirmation as I can get. Speaking of, his blog page is pretty funny:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/10678086/blog/

It's $title then "kys" for every one of these. Dude has been unhinged for 7 years.

What's wild to me is I can't find any dox about him. You'd think with a name like Lionel Frederique he'd be easy to find, but the dude is pretty off the grid.

Spoiler: Potential Dox

Looks like there was an warrant out for him 2024-06-03 to be served

https://cms7files1.revize.com/quincyma/Document%20Center/Department/Police/Resources/Police%20Department%20Press%20Journal/May%2031-June%206,%202024.pdf

Not his address though, it's a repair shop:


This might be their house:

Found via https://www.townofmilton.org/DocumentCenter/View/160/Fiscal-Year-2022-Values-by-Location-PDF
Milton, MA is in Norfolk County which is where the courts for this are, didn't see any other Frederique's pop up.

but no mention of Lionel living there:

Assuming this is correct, his Mother's fb:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1515905768456339&set=a.757723604274563

I believe we have Micky, Mom (Karine), Trisha, Erzulie and Pierre. Which just leaves that fellow in the back left who I think is our guy, Lionel...or Ludwig?
No job history at all, if he was 18 when starting college a 2016 start would put him at 26 now, the police report says he is 28, There's a bunch of stuff that comes up for Football in highschool for Ludwig, but nothing I can link to a Lionel.
It's also possible this is a brother, and he's just not listed/photographed. It's also possible this is a completely unrelated family.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

Different skillset I believe. If you look at his parses, he's always with the same group every time. Having the exact same people every time really makes it easier to get those high parses. You learn people's habits, when they move, and odds are, you're gonna be on a call with callouts and a group that can adjust if you really need them to. Sometimes these people are good at accurately repeating a set of steps run-after-run, but they struggle massively with prog and adjusting.

Comparatively, if you do it via PF, you're gonna be dealing with every type of person under the sun. Your parses are probably never going to be amazing, but you generally get better at acting in-the-moment, keeping runs going, etc.

 

[Kheapathic]

What's wild to me is I can't find any dox about him. You'd think with a name like Lionel Frederique he'd be easy to find, but the dude is pretty off the grid.

I'm not a professional doxer or PI or anything; but the times I've found inspiration to dox someone I've found two things carry a lot of the weight, phone records, and property tax records. Outside of those, you search for people around said person. If the dude doesn't have his own phone (since he apparently uses his mother's) and live in an apartment, he'll have neither of those. Not gonna lie, those phone calls he made to beard'os lawyer, laughed all the way through; and not because I think female lawyers need to be put in their place or anything, but because his ranting has very strong sovereign citizen vibes with a dash of "What are you gonna do, stab me?" - Stabbed Man. Shine on you neurotic fucking diamond.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

I think Xeems said his mother's name is Nadeen or something along those lines.
Since he lives with her, it would be her address, not his. According to Xeems, he hired a process server to serve papers to him in person and there was a point where they had to wait outside her house for 6 hours. They reported that they were able to serve Lionel the papers and that's probably what caused Lionel to start his unhinged schizo voicemail arc.

He doesn't have any friends that can help him and with the amount of baggage and mental illness this wankstain is packing, I really doubt that he has the ability to just disappear with someone's help. Remember that he literally cannot function long without being on a computer and his confidence is so laughably misplaced, that he would feel like he doesn't need to run away.

Xeems is now revealing his criminal history with some girl named Katie.

tl;dw: Back in 2013, Lionel met a girl named Katie and they started a very toxic and unhinged relationship if you can call it that. Lionel pretends to be his sister on discord to trick Katie into sending nudes. This works unfortunately. Since then, any time Katie had tried to break off the relationship, Lionel would send the nudes to all of her friends and family and would post them on instagram and pornhub in order to blackmail her into staying with him.

 

[King Of Braves]

Lionel pretends to be his sister on discord to trick Katie into sending nudes. This works unfortunately.

Fucking HOW?

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

So I obviously didn't like the BLM changes - even moreso when I found they cut the added F2 out of the AoE rotation (literally why? It's one extra button press and they already killed ShB's cold-flare option by its inclusion) - but looking at the... "changes" for healers and tanks, ehhhhhhhhhhh, I don't see myself hopping on this one until there's actually something different. It's almost all entirely the same, barring that GNB got more forgiving (as if it were hard) and DRK got less busy (I do like this one). For the healers especially to be stuck with another expansion of 12111111111111111 rotations... why? And I literally haven't touched summoner since the rework because it was so fucking boring, but to find that they got nothing, too?

What has class design been doing this entire time? I get that they've said "we're going to work on making encounters more fun before jobs," but the preview material we've seen has been... the same formula as SHB. Top to bottom.

I don't know how you really make an argument that he isn't a limited-public figure

Basically, it's not really a well-defined term. By virtue of the fact that Cosby was absolutely a public figure, publicly leveling an accusation at him could be construed as 'opting-in' and making yourself a limited-purpose public figure. Whereas here, while Baldy is somewhat-well-known to a small circle, he lacks the overall notoriety of Cosby and the vast majority of the country has no idea of who he is. Certainly, no-one knows who he's bringing the suit against.

It does in many ways come down to rhetoric, and the question of whether streamers are by-necessity public or limited-purpose public is one that'll pop up in the future for the courts to wrestle with, for-sure.

Hopefully people like llamatodd take on Lionel in court next so the lulz continue.

He seems like the kindof guy to represent himself pro se. I'd love to see that.

they don't encourage you to play multiple jobs.

The old system, whereby you had to have this many levels in this base class and this many levels in that base class, certainly did.

Frankly, I was a huge Guild Wars 1 fan, so that older system has always appealed to me. Scrapping it in favor of simplicity was doubtless good for them to draw in brain-dead paypiggies, but it's the sort of move that means they're really not interested in having any amount of depth that would lead to any additional work for them.

Lionel would send the nudes to all of her friends and family and would post them on instagram and pornhub in order to blackmail her into staying with him.

I love both that nutjobs like this exist, and that they are so common among this game's playerbase that behavior like this is almost wholly blasé.

 

[Übertroon]

The launch trailer just dropped and I'm starting to lean even more heavily towards changing language now.

They have all the new continent characters speaking in hispanic accents.
An idea that could only be dreamt up by someone in the voice acting departement being an American with brainrot

 

[Ravana]

This catlionbitch needs to relax about becoming the next hokage