|
What is the actual point of spending the time reading his response? Is it just schadenfreude? I legitimately don't mean this as a criticism of those doing this, I just...don't actually understand what you're getting out of reading abusive lies by a known abusive liar to the tune of 14000 words.
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 09:11 |
|
|
MollyMetroid posted:What is the actual point of spending the time reading his response? Is it just schadenfreude? 1) I think most people are skimming it 2) It can be useful to be able to refute lovely things, because the whole point of this is to trick people. That's not to say that everyone's gotta read it in-depth, but it's useful for at least some people to be able to dismantle arguments in detail because this thing's circulation is not limited to people that are already 100% Zak's supporters regardless of what Zak says
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:21
|
|
|
To the people that did skim, did he have a better refutation about him being accused of choking a woman without her consent than "she was dressed in a way that suggested she was into it"?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:27
|
|
|
I think some people find catharsis or something in working themselves into a ball of anger and sadness. Others are morbidly curious or feel they have to read it just in case he has something to say that exonerates him*. Still others want to understand his points so that they can dismantle those points if someone tries to defend Zak with them. I’ve read terrible things by terrible people for all those reasons. But these days I’ve found that I’m much better off if I keep my involvement very high-level “dude’s a terrible human, do not support, and also do not engage.” *Not gonna happen
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:28
|
|
|
Gerund posted:To the people that did skim, did he have a better refutation about him being accused of choking a woman without her consent than "she was dressed in a way that suggested she was into it"? To his statement, they were out in public and he asked her if she liked to be choked, she said yes, and he immediately started choking her against a wall.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:38
|
|
|
Darwinism posted:Funny how, in his giant post of cherry-picked screenshots to support his claims, he doesn't include any of these messages of support from the silent majority. "I was on RPG.net (safe space) and the swine were whispering to each other how Zak is doing great for the industry, got them some great adventures at the table and will definitely win all of the ENnies in 2020." — Jacob Wohl
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:42
|
|
|
There's also a lovely repeat of the idea that only one party can do Bad Things in a relationship. The victimized party in an abusive relationship rarely has totally clean hands, so this act of 'yeah but she could be mean too' is both exactly what you'd expect to find and does very little to change how the situation should be read. Like, let's accept for a moment the premise that Mandy herself could be abusive. So what? It's horrible for everyone involved but it doesn't absolve either party (the horrible dynamics of escalating retaliatory abuse are understandable but not acceptable, though obviously morally less repugnant than abuse that isn't stemming from a toxic cycle of victimization), and the idea that it does is one of the things I really hate because you see it way too often working in social work and family law because it's nearly always being used as a justification for escalation. See for instance 'Mandy's father''s email - 'would a woman being abused hit her spouse? I don't think so!!' is the biggest line of bullshit possible, because the answer is absolutely and unequivocally yes (which makes it doubly concerning that Frankie echoed a similar sentiment). poo poo, the escalation from emotional violence to physical violence being by the abused party is actually pretty common, and abused partners snapping with violence is so common that the 'battered spouse syndrome' defence is increasingly being viewed as legitimate in court because it's such an identifiable pattern. They have this idea an abused partner must be a total doormat, when at least in my experience, more often than not those horrific cycles of escalation emerge and require both sides to do awful poo poo over time. It's absurd.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:53
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:To his statement, they were out in public and he asked her if she liked to be choked, she said yes, and he immediately started choking her against a wall. That absolutely doesn't make him sound like a reasonable person. Who snap chokes anyone on such a flimsy pretense?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 20:54
|
|
|
Gerund posted:That absolutely doesn't make him sound like a reasonable person. Who snap chokes anyone on such a flimsy pretense? But you see he's sex positive! That means it's..... good?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 21:19
|
|
|
Gerund posted:That absolutely doesn't make him sound like a reasonable person. Who snap chokes anyone on such a flimsy pretense? Look, a boring vanilla square like you couldn't possibly understand, OK?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 21:28
|
|
|
The photos of his spokeswomen were all dated from Feb 18-20th, which coincides with two of them showing up to Reddit (alongside at least one easily confirmed Zakpuppet) to launch a PR blitz. It leaned hard into the same "we independently think this with our own girl brains" vibe Zak used when he was posting as Mandy. He's very obviously coordinating this whole response. It's something we've all known he does, and he's thankfully not smart enough to be flawless at it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 21:41
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Heh, look at this sad little prudish Tipper Gore wannabe. Sidebar the fact that I'm not 47 enough to know what a Tipper Gore reference is off-hand, If Zak's immediate response to someone verbalizing an aspect of what they like doing intimately is to physically abuse them because he could possibly get away with it, that's a pretty clear signal that he is a violent and abusive predator, by his own admission!
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 22:31
|
|
|
He's also leaning on those statutory declarations he had them sign as being particularly persuasive. They really hold no particular weight in this instance because they don't actually disprove any abuse.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 22:34
|
|
|
I think part of what's going on here is that Zak isn't writing this for the rpg community - because this is something that's hitting him in the IRL social networks he's abandoned trying to defend himself on the RPG side and writing purely for the real-life people. Like none of this is at all convincing to anyone who's interacted with him online on the RPG side because everyone knows exactly how he behaves - this is targetted at people who've seen him and Mandy socially and trying to convince them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 22:40
|
|
|
Zak also really wants the reader to know just exactly how many times he had sex with each woman he mentions by name.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 23:05
|
|
|
That also explains why it's not on his primary RPG site. He's trying to manage how he's percieved and the "apology" site doesn't offer newcomers any information that hasn't been weaponized and orchestrated for this purpose. Also maybe I am a bit Tipper Gore because I'm old, but it feels like he's talking about all the people he's put his dick into a lot more than he needs to. A lot more than a genuinely contrite person would, anyway. The screenshots of Mandy wanting sex with him also seemed like a needlessly cruel thing to leave where her dad's going to find it. But he's burning her bridges and he doesn't consider her a person. She's storygames to him now.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 23:22
|
|
|
I can understand why. A large part of the accusations are that he's sexually predatory, so he's trying to prove otherwise. The problem, of course, is that enthusiastic consent gained in abusive relationships can still be dubious and suspect and the enthusiastic consent of others does not necessarily impute it to all participants in group sex.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 23:33
|
|
|
To a lesser degree, he keeps circling back to "look how civil she was, begging for her possessions back." Which is essentially his same argument on a different subject
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2019 23:39
|
|
|
moths posted:To a lesser degree, he keeps circling back to "look how civil she was, begging for her possessions back." Which is essentially his same argument on a different subject Pleas for civility and cries for decorum really seem to help hide the goalpost shifting.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 00:15
|
|
|
Rhandhali posted:She still runs it and puts out a new issue every month. Almost 45 years straight with only a couple of issues missed. It's quite remarkable. Oh, hey, Lee Gold. That reminds me of this: https://www.conchord.org/xeno/golems.html
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 00:51
|
|
|
Pay attention to how a lot of Twitter/Facebook conversations are cropped so you don't have the whole picture of what's going on. We see a screenshot of Zak and Mandy talking about something where Zak demands Mandy's love, attention, and effort, and according to Zak the context is that Mandy's constantly being angry at other people and difficult to be around1. But for all the know, the conversation was about Mandy finding Zak difficult to be around, or Zak placing unreasonable demands on a chronically sick person. 1: Which, even if true, is still not evidence abuse didn't occur.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 02:17
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Pay attention to how a lot of Twitter/Facebook conversations are cropped so you don't have the whole picture of what's going on. We see a screenshot of Zak and Mandy talking about something where Zak demands Mandy's love, attention, and effort, and according to Zak the context is that Mandy's constantly being angry at other people and difficult to be around1. But for all the know, the conversation was about Mandy finding Zak difficult to be around, or Zak placing unreasonable demands on a chronically sick person. If the man had her passwords, how do we know he's not just talking to himself?
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 04:44
|
|
|
slap me and kiss me posted:If the man had her passwords, how do we know he's not just talking to himself? Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 05:56
|
|
|
Also the whole "If I really abused vivka then why didn't Mandy say anything? Clearly they're both lying" thing. It's really gross to expose another abuse victim who hasn't said anything publicly, but to Zak it's all about the narrative. The harm the narrative does to people literally cannot matter.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 06:42
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:1: Which, even if true, is still not evidence abuse didn't occur. Part of what makes his manifestos so gross is that he's also building in a secondary fallback case for ".. so maybe she deserved it." There's no other reason to include stuff like "one time she hit me" or build up how challenging a cross Mandy was for poor st zak to bear. Given that he probably wrote the statements* for the women to sign, consider his decision to include this damning bullet point: There were also long periods of time where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness. Zak sat and worked next to her and tried to keep her healthy. Gee. What a nice guy. She couldn't repay his kindness with sex but he kept depositing nice guy tokens in the machine anyway. And it's all stuff about how nice z was in the face of how erratic and burdensome Mandy got. But it's all coming from him. He's being the person Mandy said he was. He's putting her through this same poo poo, openly, in front of everyone, and still people hem and haw about how unfair the mob is to judge. (*from 1.his history of putting his words in women's mouths to seem less impeachable, 2.his having coordinated everything else, and 3.the look lawyer-ish enough and he's the only party claiming representation.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 16:00
|
|
|
xiw posted:I think part of what's going on here is that Zak isn't writing this for the rpg community - because this is something that's hitting him in the IRL social networks he's abandoned trying to defend himself on the RPG side and writing purely for the real-life people. And the art world, where he makes his real money.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 16:57
|
|
|
slap me and kiss me posted:If the man had her passwords, how do we know he's not just talking to himself? I mean, all we have here are pictures on the Internet and it'd be downright trivial to photoshop an entire conversation that never happened, let alone make a fake 'Mandy' account to say whatever he wants her to say. But that's an argument you have to be very careful in pushing, because if it ever becomes clear that the real Mandy did in fact write those things, having pushed that accusation will give Bad Hair Man a lot of ammunition to discredit his critics with. And since the text itself doesn't (cannot!) prove that no abuse ever occurred, and even supports Mandy's statements in some cases (e.g. that Bad Hair Man put her on a pedestal and treated her like a sex object, which she complains about in 2016), I think going down the rabbit hole of accusing it all of being the Thousand Sockpuppets of Shub-zaksabbath is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. Though, you're not wrong: we should keep in mind that whenever someone says something that conveniently feeds into his narrative, it could be Old Man Smith behind the mask.
|
|
#
?
Mar 4, 2019 22:12
|
|
|
So the Critical Role guys launched a kickstarter to fund an animated special of their first campaign, and have raised $3M so far in their first day. Clearly, this will ruin gaming forever.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 02:25
|
|
|
Desiden posted:So the Critical Role guys launched a kickstarter to fund an animated special of their first campaign, and have raised $3M so far in their first day. It's not a volcanic eruption in Uruguay, it's just Tarnowski.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 02:32
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:It's not a volcanic eruption in Uruguay, it's just Tarnowski. Imagine what'll happen when he docdumps the Mearls Emails and gets hit with a lawsuit.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 03:24
|
|
|
Spinning newspaper: Fools and money parted!
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 03:37
|
|
|
moths posted:There were also long periods of time where Mandy couldn’t have sex because of her illness. Zak sat and worked next to her and tried to keep her healthy.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 10:26
|
|
|
AFAIK, ehlers-danlos. Present tense, has; that doesn't go away.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 10:39
|
|
|
Zak's twitter has been suspended.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 11:05
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:Zak's twitter has been suspended. His main or just the side one?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 11:13
|
|
|
Loomer posted:His main or just the side one? Ihititwithmyaxe
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 11:16
|
|
|
neongrey posted:AFAIK, ehlers-danlos. Present tense, has; that doesn't go away. Oof. Yeah it doesn't. That poo poo sucks.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 11:54
|
|
|
Desiden posted:So the Critical Role guys launched a kickstarter to fund an animated special of their first campaign, and have raised $3M so far in their first day. It's over 4 million now with 44 days to go. It does kind of make you wonder what it would be like to have that kind of money funnel directly into a game company or creator. That has to be a pretty big slice of money even for a D&D thing to make, and sure CR is a massive free advert for D&D, but I wonder how much of it goes back to WotC for royalties, too?
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 15:42
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:It's over 4 million now with 44 days to go. It does kind of make you wonder what it would be like to have that kind of money funnel directly into a game company or creator. That has to be a pretty big slice of money even for a D&D thing to make, and sure CR is a massive free advert for D&D, but I wonder how much of it goes back to WotC for royalties, too? I'd assume Mercer has some sort of licensing agreement with WotC given that he published a sourcebook for his world which draws pretty heavily on standard D&D stuff (the planes, the gods, etc). I would imagine there's some sort of agreement in place for some kind of license fee or share of the profits or whatever. Honestly, I suspect this could wind up being one of the better D&D properties; they've proven that they can do decent quality animation with the new title reel and the D&D Beyond ads, they're all outstanding voice actors, and they have access to an awful lot of good screenwriters, voice actors, creative people generally... I'd be shocked if it isn't really good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 15:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 09:11 |
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:I'd assume Mercer has some sort of licensing agreement with WotC given that he published a sourcebook for his world which draws pretty heavily on standard D&D stuff (the planes, the gods, etc). I would imagine there's some sort of agreement in place for some kind of license fee or share of the profits or whatever. And on top of that, the creative team for the animation and story is top notch. Oh, and someone reached out to Hamill on Twitter to ask if he wanted to voice Vecna in the series, and he referred them to (I'm assuming) his agency. So that could be a thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 5, 2019 15:54
|
|
