Official Den of Angels/Armeleia statement
Den of Angels admin Armeleia has made an official statement about the email Lady Saiyuki posted from “her”. She’s also made a statement on her blog stating that the email is a complete fabrication. Important bits: 1. Armeleia has had no contact with Lady Saiyuki since 2007. 2. That’s not her email address. 3. The email sounds nothing like her anyway. 4. She has not had any communication from Lady Saiyuki’s supporters asking that she be unbanned. 5. “This is libel and I will be seeking counsel.”
Full text of the DoA post after the jump, for anyone who can’t access it for any reason:
LadySaiyuki – Setting the Record Straight
I am sorry for this to have come to this point; there is nothing that I would have liked more than to have remained completely uninvolved. However, I will not tolerate baseless smear campaigns against DoA or myself.
In January of this year, Asleep Eidolon made an announcement through their distributor, Mint on Card, that LadySaiyuki’s new sculpt, “Serenity,” was a modified recast of their “Pear” sculpt. Based on this announcement, coupled with photo overlays and receipts indicating that LadySaiyuki was the owner of two Pear heads that had been purchased directly from Mint on Card, LadySaiyuki was banned from Den of Angels.
Our sole communication with LadySaiyuki was her ban notice, which indicated that she would need to clear up the issue with Asleep Eidolon. This ban notice read:
According to Asleep Eidolon, your new doll sculpt’s head is a modified Asleep Eidolon Pear. We do not condone bootlegging. The issue is between you and Asleep Eidolon, so please contact them if needed.
Rather than contacting DoA, Mint on Card, or Asleep Eidolon, LadySaiyuki produced “progress photos” that were intended to prove that she had sculpted the doll from scratch. As she posted these pictures, she made several smears against Mint on Card, DoA, DoA’s members, DoA’s moderators, and me personally. Many of these statements were redacted and many images were stripped of EXIF data as time passed and other websites pointed out conflicts and contradictions in her evidence or questioned her smear tactics.
During all of this, we had no contact with LadySaiyuki and maintained a radio silence on the forum. We did not want to make any statements that could be construed as libelous or could be twisted and presented out of context.
The insults escalated for awhile, then seemed to die down. Recently, LadySaiyuki began claiming that she had emails from me, the owner of DoA, that proved that the whole situation was entirely due to a grudge match between the two of us. I broke my silence on my journal to state that I had had no contact with LadySaiyuki since late 2007/early 2008 and any email shown would be a fabrication.
A few friends notified me this morning that LadySaiyuki has publicly posted a long rant about me, including an email that I supposedly sent to her in January.
The text of this email is as follows:
From: Aimee Armeleia <armeleia.aimee@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Subject: Regarding your banning on denofangels
mailed-bygmail.com
signed-bygmail.comLet’s face it ladysaiyuki, you had this coming. It was only a matter of time before I found a new reason to ban you. You have been a thorn in my side since the Ohio workshop retreat, I’m honestly glad that you have a few haters in the community as it makes that fact that I can’t stand you so much easier to remove you from my community. I thought when you made your mature ted head I had enough needed to ban you back then, but at the time I did not own denofangels and did not have the power to get rid of you, and then you posted those comparison shots which lifted your ban. But now it’s different and I now own the site and can do as I please.
Even if you prove your innocence with comparison shots to the public, it won’t help you, as I made the statement that the claims against you have to be dropped by the companies before you would be allowed back on my website for a reason. As I have spoken with the companies and I know Mint on card and AE will never retract their claims against you even with proof as both they and I believe you are not capable of sculpting anything above cheap toys and even if you were talented enough to sculpt above that, it’s your own fault that you brought this drama on yourself, you should not have sculpted something that had any similarities to a company that is superior to yours.
I think you should just face the fact that whether you like it or not, there are people in this community that will always hate you and everything you ever do will be attacked as you are a natural target. An irritating and talentless ditz like you should have never been able to gain the popularity that you did and it pisses me off to have to deal with your freak followers messaging and emailing me that “it’s unfair” what happened to you. I don’t give a **** what’s unfair, I don’t like you, never did, never will and I want you off my site PERMANENTLY! Hence the statement I made on DoA as I know Mint and AE will NEVER retract their claim even with Proof showing they are not the same.
so seriously this will be the last time I contact you as you are not worth my time,
~AI would hope that it would be obvious to anyone with two braincells to rub together that this has been fabricated. If you compare it to any of the almost 3,000 posts I have made on DoA (or any post I have made in my public blog), the writing style is completely inconsistent with my own in terms of spelling, sentence structure, grammar, word choice, and capitalization. Instead it has a much stronger resemblance to LadySaiyuki’s own writing style. In addition, aimee.armeleia@gmail.com is not my email address, I never refer to DoA as denofangels (it is always either DoA or Den of Angels), I do not sign my notes as ~A, I do not serendipitously capitalize random words such as “Proof,” etc., etc. The whole thing is so ridiculous that it verges on comedic. I actually laughed aloud this morning when I read what I had supposedly written; I had never fancied myself such a moustache-twirling villain and wish that the whole thing had been prefaced with “Before I kill you, Mr. Bond…”
On a more serious note, this does take the whole matter too far. Both this fabricated email and her tirade about me constitute libel and will not be tolerated.
Because of her repeated smears against DoA, the moderators, and myself, LadySaiyuki’s ban is now permanent. In addition, any future sculpts that she produces will be banned from our forum regardless of originality. This includes the “rude hand” that she is sculpting for her tinies, especially considering that she has stated that the gesture is specifically directed at the doll community.
We would like to remind everyone that DoA is a privately owned and operated forum, and per our Terms of Service, we do not tolerate harassment. Additionally, banning dolls or members is entirely at our discretion; we do not owe anyone a venue to sell their dolls, nor are we responsible for anyone’s livelihood.
There will be no discussion of this post or LadySaiyuki herself on DoA, as we do not wish to continue this drama. This post was simply made to set the record straight.
Thanks for reading.
