Serennia's New Shirt (Re-blogged)

World of Ming on GAMERIOT. No longer exists I found this gem on 

http://vancephuoc.tumblr.com/

This is probably the most amusing article I read on World Of Ming. I'm speechless actually.

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Serennia’s New Shirt

In order to remain as respectful to my sources and those involved I have altered some names to keep their privacy. Trance, with colorful details added, briefly told the story of Vance “Serennia” Phuoc’s adventures on the west coast. This entry will be wholly dedicated to expounding upon that story concerning the time between the middle of December and January where I had the pleasure of meeting the nice people who took him in along with the concurrent displeasure of trying to help someone who simply did not want to be helped. I told the short introduction to this saga in my blog ”Dinner with Serennia”. This is not written to made fun of or beat down Vance or any party involved. I’ve kept it straight to the facts for people who are curious and so people know exactly what happened so that this sort of thing can be avoided in the future.

The second meeting between Vance and I occurred once again in Downtown Long Beach, CA at Pho Cafe. I’d never experienced having pho in little Saigon so to me, this was good enough pho. My fiance and I arrived a little early so we ordered a couple of drinks and discussed what we had in store for ourselves. She’s convinced that Vance has a severe psychological problem, as is Grayson’s mother, Renee. She’s been working in the medical industry before I was born, so there’s some weight to what this woman thinks.

I do my research.

The wonderful thing about my fiance is that she has all sorts of useful books lying around as a med student. So I look up the Behavioral Sciences portion of her USMLE Step 1 text. Specifically, “Personality Disorders” is of great interest to me.

Here’s what I find:

Personality Disorders
1. General Characteristics:
a. Inflexible, inability to adapt
b.One way of responding
c. Lifelong
d. All areas of life
e. Maladaptive response to stress; response to social context
f. Can thrive if situation is right
g. Interactive, interpersonal disorders
-Patients really annoy others
-Symptoms are ego-syntonic
-Patient seeks to change the world, not self

Cluster A: Odd or Eccentric
Schizoid
i. Lifelong pattern of social withdrawal, and they like it that way
ii. Seen by others as eccentric, isolated, withdrawn
iii. Restricted emotional expression
iv. Prevalence: 7.5% of population
v. Males two times more than females

Cluster B: Dramatic and Emotional
Narcissistic
i. Grandiose sense of self-importance
ii. Demands constant attention
iii. Criticism met with indifference or rage
iv. Genuine surprise and anger when others don’t do as they want
v. Can be charismatic

With this in mind, I’m going to tell Grayson’s side of the story from her perspective. This is her story told to me through numerous interviews and notes she kept on the entire situation. I kept straight to the facts.

High school senior Grayson was sleeping in her Orange County home in the beginning of December when she received a text message on her phone from AIM. It was Vance “Serennia” Phuoc, stating that he was in an emergency and needed to speak to her immediately. Perplexed, she gave her his number. He’s in a panic. Every syllable he managed to squeeze out was laden with the inextricable desperation of a man quickly running out of options. His story was that he’s evicted out of his apartment and has no place to stay due to his roommate’s irresponsibility.

Taking pity on Vance, Grayson consulted with her mother, Renee to find a potential solution to Vance’s situation. They were incredibly reluctant to have him in their home so Renee suggested that she wire him money to pay for a motel for him to live so he could find a better job and a new place to stay. He pushed on, saying that this particular scenario won’t help him at all. He’s able to convince them to fly him to California claiming his family cannot do anything since becoming poor in the aftermath of his father’s death. He reinforces his pitch by stating that he has a MA in Game Design and Development from the University of Houston, which he can leverage to get a job at Blizzard Entertainment in Orange County. Renee and Grayson reluctantly agree.

Upon arriving in John Wayne Airport (SNA) they take him to In-N-Out because he claims it as his favorite burger place. He acts nice to Renee but is cold, distant with Grayson. She gradually realizes that he simply lacks social skills and doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

Upon them arriving at their house in Huntington Beach, CA is where Nick comes into play. He had been keeping in sporadic contact with Vance as former co-workers and wanted verification that the story Vance was telling him was true. Grayson speaks to Nick over the phone. He verifies that he’s in California. When Nick asks Grayson if he flew from New York City, where he had been claiming to live for the past 4 months or San Antonio, Grayson gave the answer Vance urged her to give him: that he flew from New York, NY (LGA) as a continuing fabrication he’d carried on from months ago. Later on that night, on Facebook, Grayson reveals to Nick that Vance actually flew from San Antonio (SAT).

Nick, a little shocked that a family would be so nice to Vance without knowing him, offers his resources to help Vance find a job and suggests that they all meet for dinner so he can get a more accurate picture of Vance’s qualifications. Grayson agrees. It’s during this conversation that Nick informs Grayson of Vance’s reputation and links her to a number of articles written about Vance’s antics. From here on, they keep in constant contact to fact check everything Vance tells them. They work together to find ways to help Vance, who has proven to have lots of potential but seems to drop the ball on the execution.

For the first couple of days of Vance’s stay, Grayson and Renee show Vance places where he can find work and give him a little bit of money to buy new clothes. Vance doesn’t comply. He’s completely content on sitting in their guest room using a spare laptop they had lying around. He claimed that he had been speaking regularly with Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street about getting a job for Blizzard. “I already have an interview with them next week,” he says. He doesn’t leave the guest room the entire week, opting to wear the same clothes he had arrived in California the entire time instead of using the money provided to get new ones. Vance has a cough. Grayson supplies him with medicine daily.

Having much gratitude for their family’s hospitality, Vance promises to pay them back, saying he has money waiting for him only he is unable to access it. She has her doubts about this mysterious “ESL” company and the nebulous concept of “money” they supposedly pay their players along with his claims of getting money by blogging for SK. Nonetheless, they’re patient. They have a meeting with Nick the coming weekend so she hopes she can do something for him.

During the week before the meeting Vance is very nervous that Grayson is speaking with Nick. He tries everything in his power to discredit Nick as a player who only wants to make another Asian woman angry by sleeping with her daughter. Grayson ignores this and pushes on to the rendezvous. His last minute attempt to not go was a claim that he was waiting on receiving an important package that night from Texas. A package that ultimately never came. 

They went out for seafood and Nick orders a martini for himself and for Vance. Nick is aggressive with Vance after looking over his half a page resume. He grills him about his computer science knowledge, having quite a bit himself yet comes up with nothing. Nick stresses the importance of verifying everything so that if he puts his professional reputation on the line, he can do so with confidence in knowing exactly what he’s getting his colleagues into. Grayson and Renee sit at their places, content on letting the two talk. Vance has pushed himself as far away from Nick as possible.

Vance is on the defensive, so he decides to attack Grayson. “You’re such a player Nick and you know it. You’re just trying to flirt with Renee’s daughter.” This makes Nick very angry. He leans toward Vance with a rhetoric that can only be described as a mixture of eloquence minced in with venom.

“Look, you recieved $160 for new clothes and you’re wearing the same exact thing that I’ve seen in every picture taken of you at events.”

Vance looks at Grayson.

“Don’t ******* look at Grayson. Don’t try to blame her and make her look bad in front of her mom after everything she’s done for you. This is you and me now. You. Me. I need a copy of your diploma or some verification that you’ve done all that you’ve said that you have. Right now, as far as I know, you don’t know anything. I’m trying to help you -“

“I know you’re trying to help me.”

“Then ******* let me help you and stop lying to me. Otherwise, you’re useless. I need your diploma verified.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Thanks! Now stop trying to make Grayson look bad. You know I’m ******* engaged.”

Grayson and Renee sit quietly.

Fast forward a few weeks…..

Renee is fed up. Vance has yet to shower or changed his clothes. His soap bottle has never been used, same as the bathroom towel. She then insists on cleaning out his room. Upon doing this she discovers feces wrapped in her nephew’s underwear and neatly wrapped in one of her son’s shirts. Vance claimed it wasn’t him who did it but it was fresh, still smelled and he was the only one to use the room recently. There was trash found in every cravece of the room. From the desk drawers, night stands, walk-in-closet, desk hutch and on the floor. Vance denied all of this as well. Grayson recognized a recent wrapper she’d gotten for him: a giant-sized Hershey crunch bar.

After a week of nagging, Vance is given more money for clothes and forced to go shopping on New Years Eve. The family decides to use this opportunity to unclog the toilet in the bedroom he was sleeping, as Vance had taken to using the downstairs bathroom for the past week but neglected to say or do anything about it. After Serennia buys his new shirt, the second meeting with Nick occurs.

Grayson trails behind Vance and they enter Pho Cafe to meet Nick and his fiance Loan. Renee parks the car and joins them all later. Vance says he needs a fax number (which Renee then gives him) and that’s why he has been unable to receive the diploma due to his mother’s refusal to send it to him. Nick cusses out Vance again and tells him to step it up. Loan and Grayson talk about med school stuff while Renee sits quietly eating her food. Everyone leaves the restaurant still feeling frustrated but slightly amused at Nick’s public antics as well as Renee ninja-paying the check before Nick can ask for it.

Another week passes….

Fed up with Vance’s stalling, Renee takes matters into her own hands. She calls the Univercity of Houston to get Vance’s ID number. She uses the number and his last name to access his records on the site they have set up for that. There is no diploma. She gets her hands on Vance’s mom’s phone number. Here’s what she learns:

-The first thing his mother says is “don’t waste your time”.
-Vance never graduated from the University of Houston or ITT tech
-Vance did graduate from HS at memorial HS
-He was at University of Houston for less than 2 years and was kicked out of ITT
Tech 3 times, each time for not going to school (mother begged school to let her son back in and they complied)
-Vance is addicted to games and let his life go to waste as a result of his addiction.
-His mother spent 300k on Vance during his troubled time, to encourage him to study, which included hiring a guy for 3k a month to follow Vance (buy him food, take him to the supermarket, see to it that Vance cleans his clothes and does his hw, etc).
-this also included buying Vance a car which “disappeared” somehow.
-Vance’s father died after Vance was addicted to video games, so we shouldn’t pity Vance over the incident, as it was not a coping mechanism on his part.
-Vance never called his mom once to retrieve a diploma.
-Vance dropped out of the military because he told them he had TB (the man who followed Vance around stated something different, however; he stated that Vance told the military he wanted to commit suicide, so the military gave him an administrative discharge).
-Vance didn’t show up when his dad died; he swore to his family that he’d change, but never did
-He left the family and told them that he didn’t need any of them anymore.

After this conversation, the family confronts Vance. He breaks down into tears saying that his mother is lying, he does have a diploma and that Nick ruined his life. He presses on, saying he’s waiting for $800 from ESL and at least $2k in funds from selling his WoW account on top of money for writing for SK-Gaming. He goes on to claim that no one has ever given him a chance to prove himself. It’s at this point that the family notifies him that he was a week to find a job and a place to stay.

Here’s Grayson’s take on the situation and how it ended: “Ironically, Vance has the gall to call me spoiled when I helped take care of him. I know I’m spoiled, but Vance has no right to say that to me. My mother had to clean up after him as well. Turns out that’s the way he lived in San Antonio. His family was well-to-do and Vance had everything (food, dishes, laundry, housekeeping) all taken care of for him and yet he couldn’t complete school. At the age of 25 he never learned how to take care of himself. When we evicted him, he cried, even as my mom gave him $700 and dropped him off at a motel, which is walking distance from John Wayne Airport. He kept saying that there was no way he could possible take care of himself, at the age of 25.”

Upon being dropped off at the motel, Vance was adamant about staying in contact with the family. Vance stated the Blizzard Entertainment had given him a job at their Dallas HQ and would start the job that Saturday. He claimed to be leaving the airport at 5am. The airport doesn’t open until 7am. The next day (Sunday) Renee gets a ticket for Vance back to San Antonio because he never left. Whether he was unable to buy a ticket or unwilling is still unknown.

A short conclusion

People often ask me if Serennia began playing WoW again if I would hire him. I would hire him. In a heartbeat. He’s very talented and for a long time has been one of the best bloggers and most important members of the community. However, I wouldn’t recommend that he begin playing again to begin with. I did all I could in my power to help him but ultimately he did not want it. When I told Trance that I was tempted to hire him for my company myself, he said it’d only make me look foolish.

It’s difficult to write this as there’s no way I can come across as beating a dead horse. But even as his time on the west coast had come to an end, he was trying to talk another girl into taking him in over AIM. The messages were intercepted and Vance lost his computer access for the rest of his stay there. It’s my job as co-leader of World of Ming to ensure that you get the most useful information possible and that the most useful information reaches audiences beyond our community. This situation has proved to me why that is important. When people don’t want to help themselves, we can at least minimize the damage they cause to others while they do harm to themselves.

If you have any questions regarding anything dealing with this situation and World of Ming, check out my Formspring and ask me anything.