HHP | Ant @ Taking Back Our Community · @Ant_in_TX
2nd Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
my experience with sexual harassment in the Smash Community (edited without name
To start, I need to say this. This is going to be long and thorough. I want to give everyone full context to show how, in my experience, this started and to hopefully prevent this from happening to someone else in the future. At the same time, I know that if you're reading this, you've probably read a bunch of other twitlongers and are tired of reading paragraphs. I will try to separate a section towards the end so you can just skip there if you don't want to read everything.
But in short, the person in question here, is Anibal Alvear, A.K.A. Alvisor. He tried to take advantage of me while I was drunk at an NxL party. I will be omitting specific names, but they should feel free to come forward if they want to.
CONTEXT
I started going to tourneys, I believe mid summer last year? I know I went to like a pwf or two before the semester ended. But I started going to Senpais at the old location with a friend. I tried to get to know people from the scene, and I talked with a good amount of others. I think around my second time I went, I met and played against alvisor and he was pretty quiet and to himself, but I was more talkative. I want to say like a week or so later, we added eachother on facebook.
the first few messages were innocent, but he started throwing little compliments here and there. I have no issue with gay men, nor did I know that he was gay at the time, so I completely wrote it off. Throughout the months, I'd see him more often and thought of him as a friend, or someone to at least talk to at events, so I'd say hi. Very early on, he'd message me and ask if i was going to his tourneys and I thought he was just being friendly (I absolutely didn't know he was so prominent in the community or that he ran a crew). There was a lot of stuff like that
As I'd see him more often, I had heard that he was running NxL and I thought that was cool, I started associating the best players in the community with that name so I stuck around him. He would ask questions about my personal life, I had made it pretty clear that I was a straight man, I had talked about my ex, and about dating women in general. I was also really comfortable talking about my sexuality and why I was pretty sure that I was straight. After a few months, he had hinted that he was considering adding me to NxL and I was cool with that. In hindsight, this should have been a red flag. I hadn't really talked with or actually known anyone else in NxL, only him.
So he adds me in and introduces me to everyone and they were really wanting to go out to bars and stuff. They'd invite me and I was all for it. we all went out to ReBar (a gay bar that they frequented). This was probably mid November at this point. I was having a good time, watching others dance and drink, I was also drinking. We all got pretty drunk, except for Alvisor. He doesn't drink. At some point throughout the night, [Person A] and [Person B] (another newly added player at the time) were caught making out on the dance floor. This was strange because [Person B] was a straight man (purely consensual from my understanding). Everyone kind of knew about it and talked about, and when I asked Alvisor what he thought about this, he said "[Person A] knew that he wanted it, and [] was gonna get what he wants". This was when I was a little weary about him
another notable thing that happened was that night (4 or 5 am) when we all got back, alvisor texted me saying that he had his eye on me and thought I was looking handsome that night. Earlier on in the night, I had asked if he had his eye out for anyone, so this wasn't entirely out of nowhere. I had messaged back basically saying in a respectful way that I was straight and and not interested (I was also drunk)
We went out a few more times to bars and stuff and I had met his boyfriend who was a really cool dude, but I believe alvisor made it clear to me that they were in an open relationship.
I drank less and less at these times
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IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR THE PART WHERE THE INCIDENT HAPPENED, STOP HERE
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Around december, Alvisor sent out a message to the NxL members saying that he was hosting a party at his Sister's lake house for new years. Plenty of us decided to go, the more important names being me, [Person A], alvisor, and [Person C, a new person whom I hadn't hung out with]
I carpooled with alvisor and one other, to the lake house. At this point, I was really uncomfortable around him, he'd constantly DM me and say messages like "You're cute" or other stuff like that. I had already made it clear that I was straight, so figured he got the message and decided to carpool anyways. We get there, and everythings cool at first and more NxL people start showing up. People started drinking (someone brought a bottle of liquor), so I thought maybe we were going to really get drunk again. So I started really drinking. It turned out that while everyone else was a little tipsy, I got super drunk. While a bunch of others were in the living room singing karaoke, I was in the kitchen sitting at a table, not able to walk. I was so drunk, [Person C] was giving me food and gatorade to sober me up. I was also sitting next to someone and [Person A] sat right next to me on my chair. This was a kitchen chair, so we were up against eachother. I didn't know where to put my hand, so i put it around [Person A]. At first, it was kind of wide, but then, i started actually putting my arm around him, and he was sitting kind of into it. I didn't want to sleep with him or anything, but I was drunk and he kept me comfortable while I was alone on New Years.
Persons A and C were making sure I was safe while I was super intoxicated, and kept trying to sober me up. I think I took the night away from them. While this is all happening, Alvisor would come up to my ear and whisper stuff like "you look really cute right now" and i tried to ignore it. At one point, everyone left me alone to sing karaoke in the livingroom, and Alvisor says to me "come with me"
I was still really drunk, but had sobered up enough to drunkenly walk with him and he brought me outside and into a separate room. This room had only one bed in it, with maybe a bathroom in the back. He had told me "when everything is done, we can sleep here"
I made sure to stay far from him, I knew I was really drunk, and he was sober. We went back to the main room and I stuck with [Person A]. Until at one point, someone comes up to him and tells him that it was time to go. I think it was [Person C]. She had asked me if I wanted to go to, but I didn't realize everyone was leaving, so I stayed. Thinking i could stick with someone else.
It was me, Alvisor and his family there and he really stayed with me. I made sure I didn't fall asleep, I stayed up trying to sing Karaoke to avoid going to bed with him, thinking that he'd go to bed and leave me to sleep anywhere. But he stayed up with me until like 5 in the morning and I was super uncomfortable. When I decided to sleep on the couch in the living room, he left to that separate room and comes back five minutes later with a pillow and blanket saying he didn't want to sleep there
I slept last, woke first, and tried to stay calm until he could give me a ride back the next morning. After that, I wasn't the same since
AFTERMATH
After about, I wanna say, march? I left Nxl. I was angry all the time. I'd see his profile picture and just be mad. I would start arguments with other members in the group who were probably my closest people in NxL. He would keep on with weird comments and DM's until at one point, I had sent a message in the NxL chat saying something along the lines of "It's really creepy when people are just really persistent after I say no. No means no". It was in regards to a different convo we were having, but i wanted to make sure he saw that and afterwards, he started ignoring me. Even in the NxL chat, he'd be like borderline hostile with me. He'd change topics I was really invested in, I'd give my input on things, and he'd give snarky responses, and it was really annoying. That, along with everything else, pushed me to leave. I Think a part of me really wanted to stay, because I had really grown close to everyone else, but he was too much
I spent all this time, not seeing his profile picture, being able to work through it, but when whole twitter thing came up, man, I felt a bit of responsibility that if something were to happen to someone else and if I didn't say anything, it'd be indirectly my fault.
WHAT I WANT TO HAPPEN FROM THIS
I don't know man. This shit is crazy. I thought I could trust him from the beginning but looking back at everything, I believe the only reason he added me to NxL was so he could, eventually, get me to sleep with him. The dude is a fucking creep. If he doesn't see what's wrong with trying to sleep with a person so drunk that they can't walk, I think that's more telling than anything else. I want the community to see this and be careful. No matter where the scene goes from here, I need you to be safe. You don't know who's around you.