Is this the new F.A.T.A.L.? You know, the obscure document on some semi-random website nobody had heard of before a series of epic shitstorms catapulted it into online fame. It could have stayed that way if half the Internerd didn't feel like telling how much Byron Hall was a bad person.

In short, fuck this thread, and everyone who gives the attention whores their attention. :hatsoff:

And Pundit, you should be ashamed of yourself for reviving this inane bullshit when OHT had already done the best thing that could be done to this subject by putting a stake right through its fucking heart.

Quote from: jeff37923;551900I think this is interesting because what we are seeing is a small group of people terrorizing a game publisher and an author.
 
Here is a link to the original post that has a pretty good synopsis of this clusterfuck.
 
 
 
Now that James Desborough has joined in the conversation, the Mods at RPGnet have banned him for defending himself against his critics.
 
I said it before and I will say it again, this is one steaming pile of clusterfuck.

I can't make heads or tails of what really is going on but you are very right that is it a big clusterfuck.

Quote from: Melan;551957Is this the new F.A.T.A.L.? You know, the obscure document on some semi-random website nobody had heard of before a series of epic shitstorms catapulted it into online fame. It could have stayed that way if half the Internerd didn't feel like telling how much Byron Hall was a bad person.

In short, fuck this thread, and everyone who gives the attention whores their attention. :hatsoff:

And Pundit, you should be ashamed of yourself for reviving this inane bullshit when OHT had already done the best thing that could be done to this subject by putting a stake right through its fucking heart.

This is the only correct post in this thread.

"Kill it before it grows/he said 'kill it before it grows'."

I stand by what I posted earlier, even if it earns me a middle finger or two. I still love you guys though.

Quick summary of the opening rounds:

(1) James Desborough writes a blog post saying that rape is an acceptable topic for storytelling.

(2) Maladicta / Marlyn Cooper posts a petition which claims that Desborough said "rape is awesome". (This is a complete lie.)

(3) Mongoose posts a hyperbolic poll.

(4) Marlyn Cooper starts receiving rape threats via e-mail.

(5) Desborough posted tweets claiming that it was OK to post rape threats to Marlyn Cooper. He also claims the omniscient ability to know that none of those threats are "real".

(6) Marlyn Cooper makes a blog post in which she extensively (but selectively) quotes a conversation with Matthew Sprange.

My conclusions from this:

(1) I have not read Desborough's other writing. Maybe they are full of offensive stuff. But he's absolutely right in his blog post: Rape is a powerful and emotional event. Good stories are often built around powerful and emotional events. The history of storytelling is littered with powerful and effective stories about rape. Rape is, in fact, an acceptable topic for storytelling.

(2) Marlyn Cooper is a liar who slandered Desborough. After lying about what he said, she attempted to defend her lie by saying that "misread 'Rape is a fucking awesome plot device' as 'Rape is fucking awesome as a plot device'". Even if that is true, however, you'll note that this still means that she deliberately used selective quoting in order to completely misrepresent what he said.

When your best defense for your actions is "I'm not a liar because I was actually trying to lie in a different way", then you don't actually have a defense.

(3) The poll was clearly hyperbolic and stupid. There doesn't seem to be any indication that it was meant to be taken seriously, however.

(4) People threatening other people with rape and scumbags. But attempting to claim that Mongoose is responsible for them (despite Mongoose doing absolutely nothing to suggest or encourage such actions) appears to be just another lie that Marlyn Cooper is telling.

(5) People blindly defending people making rape threats are also scumbags.

(6) In the e-mails Cooper quoted, Sprange seems sincere in his effort to engage Cooper in a dialogue regarding her concerns with the work he's published. Given Cooper's history of deliberately misquoting people, of course, it's difficult to ascertain how badly she's distorting his e-mails to begin with. (Notably, she actually manages to quote him saying one thing and then immediately claim he said something else in the exact same post.)

So, the short summary: Desborough and Cooper both come off looking like scumbags. Sprange comes off as a guy trying to have a rational conversation with a self-admitted liar.

Quote from: Aos;551906I hate to say this, but go look at the last several pages  grognards.txt for some more perspective on this. Try to set aside your kneejerk reactions to the posters in question. I had a hard time with it, but like I said they've got some good points and it's what's being said, not whose saying it that is important. And I'm pretty sure a lot of the now deleted stuff is still up over there in the form of quotes.  This whole thing has got me rethinking my views on a number of issues.
Navel gazing aside, I think regardless of how it is presented a boycott is a completely reasonable response. I also think that rape threats, whatever their veracity, are completely reprehensible and can in no way be condoned or justified or anything else. The rest in regards to who said what and all that and rpg.net's reaction to the same is really just pixel bitching, imo.
Fuck me if I don't agree with JD corely, which is as close to eating shit as I'll ever come.

Quote from: LadybirdEssentially, everyone comes out of it looking like a twat, to various degrees.

Ultimately, I'm going to go with these.  No one comes off clean in this situation.  It's an ugly clusterfuck with valid issues on all sides, and frankly I think picking one says more about the person choosing the side than the facts of the situation.

GRIMJIM is a sexist cunt, that's been known for years.  MalaDicta did play pretty fast and fucking loose with the facts.  Matthew Sprange is a cynically manipulative jackass.

However, to me, the most important takeaway from the whole thing, is that if your opponent is arguing that there is sexism at play, the stupidest fucking thing I can imagine on earth is to respond with sexist fucking garbage like rape threats.

Ultimately, I also have to go with Melum's response.  This is a giant fucking mess on all sides, and as Levi Kornelson said on his G+, besides the issue of the rape threats and sexist slurs themselves, the rest is just mud, lots of goddamn mud that does no one any benefit by wallowing in it.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;551978Quick summary of the opening rounds:
 
(1) James Desborough writes a blog post saying that rape is an acceptable topic for storytelling.
 
(2) Maladicta / Marlyn Cooper posts a petition which claims that Desborough said "rape is awesome". (This is a complete lie.)
 
(3) Mongoose posts a hyperbolic poll.
 
(4) Marlyn Cooper starts receiving rape threats via e-mail.
 
(5) Desborough posted tweets claiming that it was OK to post rape threats to Marlyn Cooper. He also claims the omniscient ability to know that none of those threats are "real".
 
(6) Marlyn Cooper makes a blog post in which she extensively (but selectively) quotes a conversation with Matthew Sprange.
 
My conclusions from this:
 
(1) I have not read Desborough's other writing. Maybe they are full of offensive stuff. But he's absolutely right in his blog post: Rape is a powerful and emotional event. Good stories are often built around powerful and emotional events. The history of storytelling is littered with powerful and effective stories about rape. Rape is, in fact, an acceptable topic for storytelling.
 
(2) Marlyn Cooper is a liar who slandered Desborough. After lying about what he said, she attempted to defend her lie by saying that "misread 'Rape is a fucking awesome plot device' as 'Rape is fucking awesome as a plot device'". Even if that is true, however, you'll note that this still means that she deliberately used selective quoting in order to completely misrepresent what he said.
 
When your best defense for your actions is "I'm not a liar because I was actually trying to lie in a different way", then you don't actually have a defense.
 
(3) The poll was clearly hyperbolic and stupid. There doesn't seem to be any indication that it was meant to be taken seriously, however.
 
(4) People threatening other people with rape and scumbags. But attempting to claim that Mongoose is responsible for them (despite Mongoose doing absolutely nothing to suggest or encourage such actions) appears to be just another lie that Marlyn Cooper is telling.
 
(5) People blindly defending people making rape threats are also scumbags.
 
(6) In the e-mails Cooper quoted, Sprange seems sincere in his effort to engage Cooper in a dialogue regarding her concerns with the work he's published. Given Cooper's history of deliberately misquoting people, of course, it's difficult to ascertain how badly she's distorting his e-mails to begin with. (Notably, she actually manages to quote him saying one thing and then immediately claim he said something else in the exact same post.)
 
So, the short summary: Desborough and Cooper both come off looking like scumbags. Sprange comes off as a guy trying to have a rational conversation with a self-admitted liar.

Thanks for the bulletpoint version. What a mess.

You're telling me that a feminist lied?  I'm shocked.  Utterly and completely.

Quote from: Ladybird;551943That wasn't him, it was Soda Pop Miniatures. He just had a very similar idea a few years ago.

Right, although the similarities are pretty much limited to "tentacle monsters prowling after young women". MalaDicta apparently got Desborough's older Hentacle mixed up with Soda Pop's upcoming Tentacle Bento. Actually, a little while before Kickstarter shut down the funding for TB, Desborough commented on its project page: "Well, I guess rather than suing I'll back you and say best of luck weathering the incoming internet RAGE storm. Idea-thieving bastards "

Who said Nobilis?

Quote from: Aos;551994Who said Nobilis?

You just did. It obviously caused me to show up retroactively.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;551978(5) Desborough posted tweets claiming that it was OK to post rape threats to Marlyn Cooper. He also claims the omniscient ability to know that none of those threats are "real".

This part has me a bit confused. the link says

"James Desborough ‏@GRIMACHU
Apparently the person who started the petition is getting surprise sex threats. Not on. However I'm sure she knows they're not genuine threats."

How does that translate to "claiming that it was OK to post rape threats to Marlyn Cooper"? It sounds more like a frank statement of the realities of the internet.

The thread was opened to ascertain whether or not this was an example of the hobby being turned into a sock puppet by special interest groups and certain sites, specifically rpgnet, being used to belabour someone about the head and face by drumming up a shitstorm of hysteria for the same purpose. On the balance, its starting to look like it is.

The initial complaint is nonsense, he was commenting on a real literary fact. He might have expressed himself better, but unfortunately it appears to have been seized upon, misrepresented and used for libel which will almost certainly cause real and substantive damages to his future career, although he didn't make things much better for himself by responding so vigorously (which has injured his options for recourse).

Mongoose has also been damaged in the process, and to my mind without reasonable cause. The tongue in cheek poll was in slightly poor taste but nothing to warrant a witch hunt.

Well, first of all, the original blog post was correct.  Rape or any other form of human tragedy can certainly be a valid literary topic.

However, when this truth is told by a guy who makes part of his living writing sexually transgressive RPG books, the topic gets unwholesome, clammy, sticky and creepy.  Considering the source changes the nature of the post.

Similarly, when someone feels offended by such RPG books and starts posting about it, they are certainly within their rights.  However, when they start filling their discourse with easily checked lies to prove their arguments, then again considering the source results in tainting the message, even if the message was originally correct.

Once purple and SA get ahold of it, well, now you need to put on your hazmat suits to wallow through the toxic shitstorm, and need Bizarro glasses to make sense of the lies, agendas, propaganda, and misinformation.

Basically, this tempest is the textbook example of everything that is wrong with the current state of RPG Internet discourse with the original expressed ideas (both of which were true) being the first things to be pulped and splattered by the gristmill.

Quote from: Ladybird;551925Essentially, everyone comes out of it looking like a twat, to various degrees. MalaDicta is a liar. Sprange is a coward (Hiding behind "we're a small business"? Really? I'd love to see their financials, but I seriously doubt that they're bad enough one angry internet woman could put them out of business... and if you have full-time employees, in the RPG industry, you're a huge business!).

They're a small business, by the standard definition (less than 30 employees is one such definition). And yes, they are absolutely vulnerable to going out of business or being severely damaged by something like this. You can't assume they are sitting on a pile of cash, and if just one decision maker at a distributor decided to cut them loose, it could be disastrous for them. It's a very small industry.

So while I don't like some things that Desborough has written and Sprange has said, they're fighting for their economic survival.

RPGnet banning Desborough is the last straw. I won't even visit that place anymore.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;551978(5) Desborough posted tweets claiming that it was OK to post rape threats to Marlyn Cooper. He also claims the omniscient ability to know that none of those threats are "real".

Where are you getting this part? Your link does not back up the claim you make about it.  Like, at all.  At no point does he even vaguely imply that it is OK to post rape threats to her.  Am I missing something in your link, or did you mean to link to something else, or what?