Sascha Steffens · @SaschaSteffens
24th Jun 2020 from TwitLonger
My response to the twitlonger made by AnnieFuchsia about her experience with me.
The premise is a trip between the end of September and start of November 2016. Anniefuchsia, one of her friends/mods/viewers and I decided that we wanted to bridge the one month gap between TwitchCon and BlizzCon with a stay at a beach Airbnb in Venice, Los Angeles.
Before I go further, I want to apologize to Annie for the pain that my actions caused her. I acknowledge it was wrong of me to send her those flirtatious DMs. I cringe at those messages now and they don’t reflect my character.
I want to address and give context to the things Annie stated in her tweet by providing my side of the trip and the aftermath.
When we planned for this trip, Annie and I communicated through Skype calls about what we were planning to do while staying in Los Angeles. We agreed that we would spend a lot of time working during the week but we would make an effort to go out as a group for activities on the weekends. We specifically got a house for that reason just one block away from the beach in Venice, Los Angeles.
After TwitchCon 2016 in San Diego was over, we made our way to the Airbnb in LA. At this point Annie started to ask me for hugs every day, occasionally multiple times a day. In the beginning I did not think much of it so I said ok when she asked me for a hug. Eventually I noticed that she was only behaving this way with me.
At one point of the trip, someone in her WoW guild did something that made her cry on stream. She was very upset about this incident, ended her stream and progressed to be sad for days. The other housemate and I spent a lot of time with her in those days, I remember us all doing Karaoke and other activities and generally cheering her up. After this she felt better and she went back to her normal routine and streamed a lot of time.
I wasn’t able to figure out a reason for why she was constantly asking for hugs besides being interested in me. I know, immature by me not to consider more possibilities and/or simply addressing it with her. I did not want to make the situation awkward between us and possibly hurt her feelings, so I got into the habit of gently turning her hugs down in order to establish boundaries. I was also going on dates with other women at this time which Annie was aware of so I assumed after some time the boundaries would be clear between Annie and I. However one day two of her friends came to visit us at the Airbnb and we all watched a TV show together. In the middle of the show, Annie would in front of everyone give me over the top compliments. I remember the awkwardness in the room. Throughout the next days and weeks she would keep on asking me for hugs. Unfortunately I simply continued to assume that she was seeking more with me than a friendship and I was trying to keep distance through acting platonic towards her or as she would call it “stiff” in her twitlonger. This dynamic continued for over 4 weeks until the night of October 28/29.
Before I go to describe from my perspective what happened said night I want to provide more context about the emotional state I was in. I’m a very private person and I have only shared some of the following with few people. I feel embarrassed sharing this but after talking with my girlfriend about everything she believes it is important to mention. Exactly one year before this I had a trip together with Sco & Djarii to LA, also with the intention to bridge the gap between TwitchCon / BlizzCon. Someone else was supposed to join us for the entire trip but they cancelled so mostly it was just us three. Overall we created some great memories from this trip. However staying together with Sco & Djarii, a new couple at the time, was difficult as I was already going through a phase of feeling virtually no self worth and extreme loneliness. Normally I dedicated all my free time to my work and I had no real life friends which is why I was always excited for events and excited for this trip with Sco & Djarii. I was trying to mask my emotional state as much as possible but some days I would stay in bed all day to cry. I was embarrassed by this and tried to hide when I was crying from Sco & Djarii. I was raised by two women, my mom and my grandma. I have always been embarrassed by acting in a way that was not considered “manly” because being the “man of the house” is the role I tried to be all my life due to my upbringing. Once this trip was over I entered into a long term relationship that temporarily brought me out of this state. Unfortunately at the end of June 2016 I found out that the person I was dating was cheating on me. I took it badly and for a short time I fell back into the previously mentioned state of loneliness and no self worth. I tried to distract myself through work and upcoming trips to Gamescom in August 2016 and this TwitchCon/BlizzCon trip from end of September to start of November 2016. I was hoping that Sco & Djarii would join us for the latter but it ended up being only Annie, the other housemate and I for the vast majority of the time.
Annie might have not seen it as a big deal but us not going out of the house at all, not even on weekends for activities as we discussed we would do before the trip, was taking a toll on my mental state. In the beginning the other housemate wanted to primarily engage with Annie & her chat while she was streaming for most of the day so this left me alone to find something to do. Because I was embarrassed about my feelings, I did not tell Annie or our housemate about how I felt but instead I reached out to anyone I even remotely had contact with in LA to ask for activities. I ended up meeting some people and went on a few dates. I started to feel better and I was excited for an upcoming night because I was going on a date with someone I really liked from my interactions with her prior to this date. We had fun on the date but unfortunately she told me she was not looking for a relationship. I was at the time looking for a long term relationship and even though she was very nice about it, the rejection made me spiral once again to feelings of loneliness and no self worth.
This leads to the night, October 28/29. I went out with the housemate that night and I believe around 3 am at night we returned to the Airbnb. I remember going to the bathroom and then heading straight to bed and sending a drunk tweet on my public feed about why everything closes at 2 am in California. I also reached out to several people to just talk but everyone seemed to be asleep. This is when I sent a Twitter DM to Annie saying that I used the brown bath towel but every other towel is clean, this tweet included a heart emote (<3). I don’t believe I had any intentions with that DM other than simply to talk with someone. To my surprise she was awake and answered “You must be drunk. You can’t be this nice to me.” Up to this point, after over 4 weeks, I had been very platonic with Annie and I did not reciprocate what I saw as flirting from her side through her constantly asking for hugs and giving me over the top compliments. After Annie asked why I sent her a heart emote I responded “Because I like you”. I acknowledge this was inappropriate for me to say given our work relationship and I once again apologize to Annie for sending that DM and putting her into this position. In my mind, this was me finally reciprocating her advances of 4 weeks in a moment of vulnerability. Eventually she responded that she didn’t see me that way. I remember being confused and I ended up doing a terrible job dealing with the situation. Eventually I pivoted the conversation to something that happened between Annie and the other housemate earlier in the trip. Both of them were drinking a lot during one of Annie’s streams and a rather weird scene transpired in front of me after the stream ended. The best I can explain it is that it seemed similar to a mild version of sibling wrestling. Annie would ask the other housemate for massages quite often during the trip and they had a prior friendship so at the time I didn’t think much of them being physical with each other (in a non-sexual way). I felt uncomfortable with the situation regardless and I was thinking they are both drunk so they may do something they will regret later. So I more or less dragged the drunk housemate out of Annie’s room to go out together with him. To be clear, the housemate did not touch her intimately and I stated that to Annie in the DMs. Frankly this was just a topic I hastily decided to pivot to in my state to ease the tension. Obviously there were a million better topics and I’m not proud of making intimations that could have been understood in a wrong way. If the other housemate from this trip is reading this. I am sorry.
I made things more awkward through the continued conversation in DMs and I thought we needed to have a conversation in person. I decided to knock on her door in the hopes to resolve this situation through a real conversation instead of DMing. I believed this action was appropriate as we were friends but in retrospect this conversation should have happened the next day instead. She let me into her room and I sat on the opposite side of the room from her. Besides addressing the situation, I explained to her that with all my dates during this trip I was looking for a long term relationship and that I felt sadness from being rejected by the date I had very recently. I did not tell her my backstory before this trip and how I often felt during this trip. Maybe I should have told her that but it was very hard for me already to share bits of that story with my best friends due to feeling embarrassed about my feelings. We talked for I believe around 20 minutes and eventually I said to her I’m heading to bed. She gave me a hug and I went to my bed to sleep.
It was the next day I believe that Sco and Djarii arrived at the Airbnb to spend the last days in LA with us before we would head off to BlizzCon in Anaheim. Because we only had 2 bedrooms in the Airbnb, we agreed that I give my small bedroom to Sco and Djarii. Only the two bedrooms had air conditioning and Sco/Djarii’s bedroom was too small for an air mattress so I asked if I could put an air mattress in Annie’s master bedroom and she agreed. Eventually all five of us (Annie, Sco, Djarii and I) headed towards BlizzCon. I remember some friendly encounters with Annie during BlizzCon but retrospectively I regret not double checking with her in regards to how she felt about the DMs. From our encounters and conversations following the DMs I was under the impression things were ok between us.
Fast forward to April 24, 2017. Annie’s contract with Method was expiring and we were negotiating with Annie and her agent about renewing with Method. We had a call with Annie & her agent and I recall her stating that she was keen on re-signing with Method. The following week her agent and I went back and forth on contract conditions.
A week later, on May 1st, as shown by Annie’s screenshot of the emails below, she emailed among other things to my business partner Sco the following:
Email excerpts between Annie & Sco from May 1st: https://imgur.com/a/mX7UFuD
Sco asked me if something bad happened to Annie in the US. At first I thought this was about the situation with her guild mate because this is the only thing she was visibly very upset about, caused her to cry on stream and as described before the other housemate and I spent a lot of time together with Annie right after this incident to support her. The guild mate in question was also Annie’s agent who we were actively negotiating Annie’s contract with. I remember believing that this is something between her and her agent. Looking back, I was probably in denial for thinking this was not about the DMs.
Email excerpts between Annie & Sco from May 14th & 15th: https://imgur.com/a/1Kmi9pP (3 & 5 emails from Annie, 4 from Sco)
Sco later clarified this is between Annie and I, on May 14th, after Sco was told more about the situation by Annie. Sco intimated to me that she said to him that I made advances towards her. I remember then reviewing the DMs to make sure I recollect everything because of drinking involved in that night. After reviewing the DMs and confirming my recollection of how things transpired, I decided to send her the below message on Skype with the intention to apologize to her for the DMs, hearing her side of things and expressing to her my side.
Skype conversation 1: https://imgur.com/a/AVuqSDJ
With no response from Annie, Sco eventually told me that Annie wrote to him: “Sascha basically invited me to his bed at night time…”. And upon Sco asking Annie whether she could’ve misunderstood me she replied to Sco “About the Sascha thing, there is no misunderstanding there. I still have the text messages.” (With text messages she is referring to the DMs I sent to her). I was angry at myself for causing this situation. But now I was also upset at Annie for accusing me of something that didn’t happen. Neither in the DMs that she referred to nor at any other time did I invite Annie to my bed. There is a huge difference between the flirty DM that I sent to her and inviting her to bed with me.
For 10 days I tried to have a conversation with her about this. Before this whole situation started, I had conversations with her about business related topics between BlizzCon 2016 and this point in time so she was ok with talking to me in general. This is when I sent to her the messages below on Skype.
Skype conversation 2: https://imgur.com/a/dhhGFUY
Skype conversation 3: https://imgur.com/a/wMH8na3
She again implies here what she already told Sco and I in our first call in April, that she was considering to stay with Method. This together with saying “What happened is in the past…” gave me the impression that she wants to resolve the situation. I believed at the time that she was not intentionally accusing me that I sent her messages of I “inviting her to my bed” (which is untrue) and she just thinks that’s what I said in the DMs. The Skype texts continued:
Skype conversation 4: https://imgur.com/a/k6BggX4
What now transpired is something Annie only briefly addressed in her post but played a significant role in everything from here. Screenshot from Annie’s statement for context about the next paragraph: https://imgur.com/a/lcXz8HM
Out of nowhere while I was trying to talk to Annie, my girlfriend who I was dating for over 6 months at the time, tells me that one of her friends told her something strange about me. To be clear, there is no connection between my girlfriend and Annie, they don’t know each other besides one very brief encounter. My girlfriend explained to me her friend cautioned her about me because of something he was told by someone else about me. My girlfriend prodded her friend to learn more details. It turned out that my girlfriend’s friend is friends with someone who Annie is friends with. This friend of Annie’s was allegedly spreading very scathing things about me that she was allegedly told by Annie.
It was clear in my mind that if even my girlfriend was told of the situation through friends of friends, Annie was likely spreading her false accusation that I “invited her to my bed”. I want to repeat again that this is not true, I did not do that.
I was now absolutely terrified. I was scared that people would not believe me or care for my side of the story because Annie was a big streamer and I was a nobody in the scene back at the time. I was always the person in the background at Method. I put all my passion into Method, it was for a long time the only constant thing that kept me going in life. From my perspective, Annie had my life in her hands, she refused to talk to me about the situation but meanwhile she was allegedly spreading false accusations about me. I was convinced this would lead to me losing my job and any friends I made through this job. Despite my girlfriend's strong support throughout this, I was also afraid that I could lose her. We were in a long distance relationship and losing my job would make me unable to afford the travel to see her.
This is when I sent the following Skype message to Annie because of her refusal to talk to me.
Skype conversation 5: https://imgur.com/a/2BAckxj
Skype conversation 6: https://imgur.com/a/0M6WvFg
Skype conversation 7: https://imgur.com/a/upGo0nQ
I’m not proud of mentioning legal action but Annie’s refusal to talk to me made me think of it as a last resort for stopping the spread of the false accusation that I “invited her to my bed”.
Annie would continue to not speak to me, including at events, and I saw nothing else that I could do other than learn from this and become a better person. I’m a more mature person today and I would never let myself be in a situation like this again. I hope that the people who know me and engage with me regularly can speak for my character.
I would also like to make clear that no one else in Method's staff team had any knowledge or involvement in this situation, outside of the management mentioned within this post.
Again, I’m sorry Annie for sending you those DMs 4 years ago. I’m sorry to everyone I disappointed because of this. I’m sorry for friends, colleagues, fans and anyone else who is adversely affected because of this.