So, here are my thoughts here. I want to do my best to provide what I believe is a measured response. It is certainly true that lavilla is a staff member and that condoning or supporting harassing, rude or disparaging comments even in private is probably not something a staff member should be doing. It is certainly true that lisek's comment was inappropriate despite whatever misgivings they have with botanist as a person. Does this mean lavilla is guilty of owning a "metaclique"? Well....
We can see in the screenshot lavilla is criticizing botanist's application due to their past cited work. "I-love-meat" consists of themes that are generally not appropriate for the server. Themes that are even banned explicitly from on-server roleplay scenes. Thus, it is certainly fair from my point of view to criticize an applicant for creating work not necessarily conducive to our server's themes. While you're correct lavilla that a post saying "-1 what you wrote was sus" would certainly not be helpful a post that says something like "Hey you created this work some years ago that clashes with out server climate. Why do you hold it as an example of work to show your capabilities for a lore postion?". The latter gives botanist the chance to respond to the criticism. You yourself have been through the applicant process for a lore position lavilla. I am sure you can understand why botanist might be frustrated at comments being made about him in private where he cant respond to them.
That being said this is a level of scrutiny that is several orders of magnitude greater than a couple comments in a friend discord would warrant. I sincerely doubt you considered the comment you made (or lisek's) anything more than a 5 second thought as you went about your day. I also do not think you're operating an unhealthy metaclique based on what evidence we have here. I would need to see comments indicating direct support for hateful comments directed at community members, calls for brigading a thread, targeted harassment of individuals through our community channels. Things of that nature.
Danse has a point. The unfortunate reality of discord (and the internet as a whole) is that it is incredibly easy to create an echo chamber for yourself. In our roleplay community it is inevitable you will meet characters and players you vibe with and those you dont. It is all too easy to create community's and groups that bring those you vibe with closer together and push those you dont further away. On most levels i believe this is healthy behavior, we all have friends we play games with. I think it becomes a problem when the "private speech" we use to discuss individuals in these discords differs wildly from how we conduct ourselves on official server channels. I myself am probably guilty of this behavior, nobody is perfect.
I think we should try to be cognizant of the harm a couple messages can do to overall server health. Even in private. I think we should always remember the human being behind a character we might not enjoy playing with.