Saturday, February 23, 2019

Mandy and Jennifer and Hannah

I believe Mandy and Jennifer and Hannah re: Zak S being abusive.  My post about it will be pretty brief as other people said everything I would say but better. Arnold K has a good collection of people's responses.  Chromatic Cauldron (one of my favorite illustrators in the space) has an excellent personal testimony of the toxicity that he fostered in the community.  I hope we can have a better community and I'm going to work hard to ensure that toxic, misogynist and abusive behavior have no part in any scene I'm in, including DIY DnD.  I'm going to boost good work by good creators, and not overlook anything that seems off.  Less important stuff relating to my choice not to run Zak's material after the jump.



So obviously I've run a lot of Zak's stuff in the past. The sidebar has all the play reports from Red and Pleasant Land, the Waterdeep stuff has tons of material from Vornheim, and I was gearing up to run Maze of the Blue Medusa. I've already bought these books, so it's not a question of supporting him (not going to be buying any books going forward) but rather what to do with the material I already have. I think the short answer is I'm going to hit pause on running any of that material for a long while. A disturbing thing in Mandy's post was about how he was infantilizing her, idolizing her body and not respecting her as a person.  There is a whole section in Maze that mirrors this pretty exactly, and that's got me unhappy enough that I don't want to run any of that stuff until I've had time to read it through, talk with my players and think about what kind of ideas I'm bringing into my elf games. 

Be good to each other, and I want to say thanks to all the women who came forward, I'm sure it was terrifying but we believe you.
 


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