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Falstaff posted:It's not necessarily anything so sinister. Plenty of old-school liberals put ~*~the dialogue~*~ on a pedestal, which involving asking questions and playing devil's advocate, and believe that they have the right/duty to expression their opinions even on things they know nothing about. If you push back against them in the wrong way - particularly by pointing out they don't know what they're talking about - their natural response is to dig their heels in and double down. And if you block them on new media, whoo boy... The first conversation that Mentzer attempts to strike up with Jessica Price isn't in and of itself proof that he's some sort of serial groper or something but it does pretty handily demonstrate that he doesn't really have a grasp of things like appropriate boundaries, and at this point given how shitful so many grogs and grog celebrities have turned out to be I can't really say I blame anyone who looks at this situation and leaps to that conclusion. Also Mentzer wasn't even "just asking questions" by the sound of it, he was straight-up telling victims or harassment and assault that it was their fault for not defending themselves better, so gently caress him.
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Oct 18, 2017 19:18
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That initial exchange feels like an eerie time capsule from my youth in the 70s and 80s with a lot of guys trying to be progressive. Like, he's wanting to stress to her that he's "safe", but still feels the need to call out her attractiveness and all this other stuff. I'm sure in his mind he feels he's being an "ally" and that arguing that women should fight back signals that he thinks they're strong and empowered. All the stuff that follows seems to follow the same pattern you see with otherwise left-leaning types who rant about "SJW harassment"; its easier to try to label your critics as fringe wackos than acknowledge that maybe the world moved on faster than you did.
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Oct 18, 2017 19:41
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Desiden posted:That initial exchange feels like an eerie time capsule from my youth in the 70s and 80s with a lot of guys trying to be progressive.
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Oct 18, 2017 20:01
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https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/920879215301476352 Paizo seems to have a problem. Telling Jessica Price that there's only so much of her speaking out about abuse that they'll tolerate, loving up the handling of sexual harassment at their con because of who was doing it, harassment in their pathfinder soc and not doing anything, ohh and of course the actual abuse demon and 'here's how to be an abuser' powers in their books.
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Oct 19, 2017 08:50
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Yeah, I kind of zeroed in on that tweet when I read that thread. I think (hope?) there are elements within Paizo who are genuinely progressive, but the company as a whole is being driven by shits.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:11
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potatocubed posted:Yeah, I kind of zeroed in on that tweet when I read that thread. I think Price was one of those progressive people in the company, and she left. She'd been a really positive person in the industry, outspoken on social issues, but there's a definite claim there that they weren't happy about her expressing all those views. The grog must flow.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:27
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Yeah, it's become real apparent that Paizo's whole "No see we're actually serious about being progressive!" thing is just as performative as WotC's, and maybe even far more insultingly so since they've been using their own employees as a shield.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:35
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I didn't know Price wasn't in Paizo anymore until just today. I think her departure might have something to do with all the disagreeable poo poo that the company has done since then.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:37
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I was going to say that first facebook post by Mentzer sounds less like a creep and more like an old dude who's trying to say something nice and loving it up because poo poo's changed and he hasn't kept up, but god loving drat it, the rest of it, what an rear end in a top hat. This is really depressing.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:I didn't know Price wasn't in Paizo anymore until just today. I think her departure might have something to do with all the disagreeable poo poo that the company has done since then. I think you’re right. Which is a shame! I didn’t know either and that lines up too well.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:41
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AlphaDog posted:I was going to say that first facebook post by Mentzer sounds less like a creep and more like an old dude who's trying to say something nice and loving it up because poo poo's changed and he hasn't kept up, but god loving drat it, the rest of it, what an rear end in a top hat. This is really depressing. I'm not even a woman and that post by Mentzer gives me huge creepo vibes. Like if someone, anyone, started trying to do poo poo like the "oh if only I was 30 years younger, WINK" thing and they weren't actually someone I knew super-well, that would instantly be setting off some red flags for me. I don't even buy the "oh well they're old and things have changed" excuse because I'm pretty sure that stuff was still creepy 30 years ago, it's just the these days people are more likely to be outspoken about it, and frankly it's not that hard to keep up with the how-not-to-be-a-creepy-rear end in a top hat times if you're actually interested in doing so. Who knows, now that Paizo has some vacancies maybe they'll hire Frank themselves, he seems like he'd fit right in over there.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:49
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I know you’re joking but Mentzer already did contract work for Paizo.
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Oct 19, 2017 09:51
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Kai Tave posted:I'm not even a woman and that post by Mentzer gives me huge creepo vibes. Like if someone, anyone, started trying to do poo poo like the "oh if only I was 30 years younger, WINK" thing and they weren't actually someone I knew super-well, that would instantly be setting off some red flags for me. I don't even buy the "oh well they're old and things have changed" excuse because I'm pretty sure that stuff was still creepy 30 years ago, it's just the these days people are more likely to be outspoken about it, and frankly it's not that hard to keep up with the how-not-to-be-a-creepy-rear end in a top hat times if you're actually interested in doing so. Apparently I wasn't clear. What I meant was that I was going to say that when I started reading the twitter thread, but the rest of it showed me that my initial impression of Mentzers intent was wrong and he is, in fact, a loving creep. That was my first impression, from just the first post, because I know a bunch of elderly people, they all have several bland jokes on repeat, "If I were 20/30/40 years younger...(insert coughing laugh noise)" is almost invariably one of those jokes, and I've never gotten a creep/sleaze vibe from any of them. A lot of the time it's directed towards a sports car, or an ad for an ice skating rink, or somethig else they feel like they can't have/do any more. I'm gonna pay a bit more attention from now on in case I'm just dead wrong about the whole thing though. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 10:22
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AlphaDog posted:Apparently I wasn't clear. What I meant was that I was going to say that when I started reading the twitter thread, but the rest of it showed me that my initial impression of Mentzers intent was wrong and he is, in fact, a loving creep.
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Oct 19, 2017 10:32
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Flavivirus posted:The issue is that in this situation the thing he felt he couldn't 'have/do any more' is a woman, with the same lack of concern he'd have for the ice rink or sports car's feelings about the proposition. Yeah I don't need that explained, I totally get it. Let me try again. My gran and her friends say various formulaic poo poo all the time without thinking about it like they're on autopilot. "If I were 30 years younger" comes up a lot. I have not once perceived it to imply "I literally want to have sex with that person" and it seems like I need to re-assess that because without thinking about it I applied that mindset to a situation where the person who made that comment appears to have meant exactly that. edit: Which means it's likely I'm wrong about the intentions of the old people I know in real life. Which is super depressing. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:44 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 10:39
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So, so far we have Paizo and child abuse demon rules (aka, we literally give you magic tools to make you a better abuser, and the more you do it, the easier we make it), Paizo loving up how to handle harassment and assault at their convention, because the attacker was an industry partner of theirs. Paizo loving up how to handle harassment/abuse in their strongly-linked/managed Organised Play community and Paizo pressuring staff not to speak out about bad actors in the industry/warning them not to, you know, speak out too much. White Wolf's gonna have to up their game to get their crown back.
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Oct 19, 2017 11:33
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Sounds to me like workers in the TG industry ought to have a union.
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Oct 19, 2017 11:36
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AlphaDog posted:Yeah I don't need that explained, I totally get it. Fair enough, no worries.
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Oct 19, 2017 11:43
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PST posted:So, so far we have Paizo and child abuse demon rules (aka, we literally give you magic tools to make you a better abuser, and the more you do it, the easier we make it), Paizo loving up how to handle harassment and assault at their convention, because the attacker was an industry partner of theirs. Paizo loving up how to handle harassment/abuse in their strongly-linked/managed Organised Play community and Paizo pressuring staff not to speak out about bad actors in the industry/warning them not to, you know, speak out too much. Don't forget the old classic of making progressive overtures such as having a dedicated lesbian couple in their main cast and then turning around and licensing out that same couple as breeding stock to Kingdom Death.
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Oct 19, 2017 12:06
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Arivia posted:Don't forget the old classic of making progressive overtures such as having a dedicated lesbian couple in their main cast and then turning around and licensing out that same couple as breeding stock to Kingdom Death. ...I'm sorry, what?
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Oct 19, 2017 12:51
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They teamed up with Kingdom Death to make get Pathfinder Iconics minis made for use with a game that features a lion made of dicks as a monster you fight.
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Oct 19, 2017 13:19
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unseenlibrarian posted:They teamed up with Kingdom Death to make get Pathfinder Iconics minis made for use with a game that features a lion made of dicks as a monster you fight. kingdom death is cringeworthy garbage but i think you oversold things a little there
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Oct 19, 2017 13:44
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Um, no, they're not. I'm not even going to link it but there's a lion like, covered in dicks.
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Oct 19, 2017 13:47
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mods please change my name to lion ma-ok maybe not That's not hyperbole though
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Oct 19, 2017 13:49
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Yeah, honestly I was indulging in understatement.
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Oct 19, 2017 13:55
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The dick lion isn't even in the top ten of the awful gross miniatures in that line.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:12
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Hm, I know what would be good for the brand, to associate with some fetish torture porn miniatures.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:25
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PST posted:https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/920879215301476352 Okay, this is weird... She's blocked me on twitter. I've never been blocked on twitter before. I made all of one tweet to her, ever, and I thought it was pretty clearly in support of her (at least, it expressed my disappointment with Mentzer). This must be a very stressful event for her, I guess. Well, regardless, Paizo's much worse off for losing her.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:28
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I'd just like some clarification to know how disgusted I should feel about this: Did Paizo contract the Kingdom Death guys to make miniatures unrelated to the KD game, or are they 'in-game/canon' to KD? And were they made as identical to their illustrations in Pathfinder as possible, or were they 'sexed up' by the KD guys (assuming minimal sexing up by Paizo first, I don't actually know who the lesbian couple are/how they look)?
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Oct 19, 2017 14:33
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Antilles posted:I'd just like some clarification to know how disgusted I should feel about this: Did Paizo contract the Kingdom Death guys to make miniatures unrelated to the KD game, or are they 'in-game/canon' to KD? And were they made as identical to their illustrations in Pathfinder as possible, or were they 'sexed up' by the KD guys (assuming minimal sexing up by Paizo first, I don't actually know who the lesbian couple are/how they look)? They were originally sexed up and Paizo had to ask them to add more clothes.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:34
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Kwyndig posted:Um, no, they're not. I'm not even going to link it but there's a lion like, covered in dicks. I believe the overselling parts is: "licensing out that same couple as breeding stock to Kingdom Death"
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Oct 19, 2017 14:36
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Falstaff posted:Okay, this is weird... She's blocked me on twitter. Do you have a picture icon? A lot of folks autoblock 'eggs' on twitter just because it's a fast 'lovely troll/bot' indicator.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:36
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Falstaff posted:Okay, this is weird... She's blocked me on twitter. There are a bunch of ways that you can end up being blocked by someone without being singled out, if they the various ways to mass-import blocks of accounts as a means of shortcutting having to weed out lots of people.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:39
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unseenlibrarian posted:Do you have a picture icon? A lot of folks autoblock 'eggs' on twitter just because it's a fast 'lovely troll/bot' indicator. Ah, that would explain it. I barely ever use twitter, so never got around to it. Thanks.
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Oct 19, 2017 14:40
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Yeah, 'have an avatar' is one of those unspoken Twitter rules that got me on a lot of blocklists a few years ago.
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Oct 19, 2017 15:06
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This is how Paizo announced it and here's the Kingdom Death Kickstarter side of it. Those specific links should be okay, but if you click around or scroll too far down on the Kickstarter there is stuff that is NSFW, is just generally sexist and gross, or both. It's pretty clear this is less a business deal than a crossover promotion, and the Pathfinder leads basically putting a seal of approval on Kingdom Death. Explicitly saying "hey if you like Pathfinder you'll like this too!" Which characters Paizo picked matter too. You have Seoni, who is Paizo's designated "cheesecake" character and has always been a bit of a contentious iconic on her own. You have Valeros, who has two salient features: extreme genericity and being a womanizer. And then you have Kyra and Merisiel, who are notable as openly lesbian characters in a relationship, and one of the few positive representations of queer relationships in table top. Plus Kyra is also one of the few respectful and sympathetic presentations of a Middle Eastern woman in media in general. When you put this in context of the KD announcement, that becomes really troubling. That makes it explicit what the appeal of these characters showing up in KD is. It skates around sexual violence - which comes up a lot in KD - but even without that it's completely about giving license to mutilate and torture these popular characters. Also worth noting, here is the KD side art for Merisiel:  Versus prior Paizo art of her:   In a vacuum the KD one is not that bad - in fact purely on a technical level it's better composed and designed than the Paizo pieces. But in context of her canonical portrayal, and KD's other work... EDIT: And I hate to have to say it, but there are a few people Price has blocked in this community ultimately stemming from this KD thing. When it came out folks on Twitter hit her up mostly for some reassurance because this seemed really out of character for a company that was quite enthusiastically promoting itself as progressive. Plus Price's own statements and activity on Twitter suggested she'd be someone who could at least provide some clarity. Her response was to angrily declare that it was unreasonable to ask an employee to publicly second guess or call out their employer, and that the people trying to find out what was going on "wanted her to lose her job for their entertainment." I'm personally pretty understanding to the idea that people have to swallow poo poo they don't like from an employer because they have to eat, and our system puts people in lovely positions where they have to make that choice. But Price has a long history of calling on people to stand up and speak out and take risks to stop this kind of behavior, of demanding more advocacy from people in the industry, and also being really unsympathetic to the defense she proceeded to make there. But when it was her turn to do that, she ducked and covered. That she was apparently aware of a lot of this other Paizo stuff coming out now, said nothing then, yet still proceeded to make the sort of statements she did and upsell Paizo's progressivism while there leaves a bad taste in my mouth, personally. Some of what I'm referencing can be found here: here. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 15:08
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Yeah no, that's pretty bad. I could understand/forgive if they just wanted some high-quality minis, but actually putting them in the same game as dicklion and the wetnurse thing is a bad look, no matter how you slice it. That said, the initial 'licensed out as breeding stock' comment is a bit... off? Certainly comes off a bit too strong, imo.
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Oct 19, 2017 15:44
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adhuin posted:I believe the overselling parts is: Given that Kingdom Death's mechanics include making women have babies, it's not.
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Oct 19, 2017 15:45
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It's strong but yeah, that's very much a thing that happens in Kingdom Death, and while Paizo clearly ellide it themselves and must have directed the KD people to stay away from it, it's very much a thing that the Paizo leads would know about. Even outside of that blog post they're on record as being very big fans and players of KD, and this would have been based on their original Kickstarter that was in no way ambiguous about that content. In fact if you look at the rest of Kingdom Death's media (which I do not recommend), where the sexual violence and cheesecake aspects are very much fore-fronted, the way its downplayed or missing from the Pathfinder crossover actually stands out, to the point where it really feels like they deliberately swept it under the rug. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Oct 19, 2017 |
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Oct 19, 2017 15:51
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A guy who was working on Empyrea with Frank Mentzer speaks up. http://tedfauster.com/2017/10/18/fallen-hero-the-end-of-my-business-relationship-with-frank-mentzer/
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