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cruddyborderlandstheories · 4 years

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so i’d really like to finish my guardian takedown lore analysis, but honestly the game isn’t really fun to play at the moment anymore (even with the health debuffs they added) so I think im going to be taking a break for now because I’m just not having fun anymore.

this game has a lotta mechanical problems i think need to be addressed so im gonna summarize it as bullet points below. I’ll play the new dlc when it drops, but idk if i’ll be on more than that (grinding, end-game stuff) until they make some serious changes. I’ve been playing (near) daily since launch, followed the patch/hotfix notes every single week, and my patience has finally, FINALLY run dry, especially with that really disappointing Phase 1 Patch and then the hotfix this week not adding anything else. What is the balancing team doing??? 😩

tl;dr: FIX THE VAULT HUNTERS!!!!

anyway. That’s all I needed to get outta my system. I might log on to this blog every now and again to post some random shit that pops into my head (probably with regards to my AU), but I’m not going to be actively playing and posting for the time being. Goodbye (for now), and here’s hoping the new DLC is good!!

guardian takedown only problems:

there’s a lot of waiting around, and sometimes it’s not explicitly stated that you’re waiting for something, so you’ll be lost on what to do next (not sure if that’s a dialogue glitch or not)

the crystal charge insta-death is bull. just. what the hell. at least make it so you just have to start over. killing ur players for failing a “puzzle” that they then have to fight all the way back to is so infuriating.

dying because you fell off a platforming puzzle is also bull.

i remember playing the first DMC on my playstation in middle school and having a conniption over the part in the observatory(? it’s been a hot minute since I played DMC 1) with the disappearing/invisible platforms. I h a t e jumping puzzles. why are they in a section of the game where death is semi-permanent and a detriment to your teammates. i tried the takedown 2x with friends and both times one friend didn’t make the first big jump to the temple and had to wait for our inevitable deaths. that’s so unfair to them.

there’s absolutely no reason for a boss to have 12 fuckin immunity phases. 4 per health bar with 3 health bars? Who the fuck designed this? *pumps shotgun* i just wanna talk.

i appreciate a tasteful immunity phase every now and again (the ones in the Valkyrie fight are actually p reasonable), but christ. that is overkill. I don’t mind the main boss fight, since u can end those early through certain actions, but jesus. the mid-boss fight is annoying as hell. you spend more time running from the immunity phases and finding the damn boss than u do actually shooting it.

drop rates are crap, which I guess should be expected given what happened with the Maliwan Takedown and the handful of months it took for them to fix that, but also you think they’d have learned.

in the maliwan takedown there’s a sense of progression thru the facility after you kill each area’s batch of enemies, but in this one it’s... dampened by the crystal charging sequences. you kill all the enemies in an area, press a button, and now you have to kill 3x that number of enemies in the same area, expect you’re just standing there motionless. It’s not fun.

the crystal charging stuff is just not fun in general. standing in a square is not entertaining. it’s worse that it was clearly designed for 3+ players when a majority of people play/grind solo

i gotta admit the boss fights just aren’t as fun as the Maliwan Takedown fights overall. I felt like a real badass fighting Wotan for the first time, but the main boss for this Takedown is kind of a bitch. Wotan’s fight is chaos, there’s so much shit happening at once and you don’t really have time to process everything and I love it. This one is p meh...

This would be fine and I’d 100% not care that much if there weren’t all these OTHER problems

General Issues with the Game

There’s no endgame stuff to play outside of the takedowns.

I assume they’re working on the first raid given some stuff I found in the Guardian Takedown files, but I really wish they’d keep the seasonal events/areas. They give us the option to disable/enable them while they’re ‘active’, just give us the ability to do it whenever we want.

when i hop on i either run through Athenas (my favorite map), or farm a boss or two. I have all the loot i really need from the maliwan takedown/elsewhere, and the guardian takedown just... isn’t fun atm, so i have nothing to do.

I’ve reset my playthru multiple times to play the main story at m10, but u can only play it (and the dlc) so many times

Mayhem levels and modifiers are a hot m e s s

a majority of the modifiers just aren’t fun to play with

they incorporated like 2-3 fun modifiers (from the community), then added a bunch that straight-up aren’t. I’m fine with the game being more difficult, but at least give us modifiers that make it more entertaining to play at a higher level instead of more annoying. I like the ones that have trade-offs or add new ‘enemies’, but I hate the ones that just straight up reduce your damage output.

a majority of the weapons with the mayhem 10 anointment (scaling) do not work on mayhem 10 (we’ll go more in-depth with this later)

Player Characters (Vault Hunters!!!) are also a hot mess and a lot of problems plaguing them haven’t been fixed SINCE LAUNCH

theyre literally the basis of the game and its balance. why havent you guys fixed them yet. stop adding new content until they’re fixed. no new skill trees until the base 3 trees work ON EVERY CHARACTER.

seriously. Why is amara p much limited to using Phasegrasp. Why does Iron Bear not matter to Moze except to proc anointments. MAKE ALL ACTION SKILLS EQUAL AND HAVE HEFT.

i wrote an essay here about it bc i feel that strongly about this

SERIOUSLY FIXING UR VAULT HUNTERS WILL MAKE BALANCING SO MUCH EASIER PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU THEY ARE THE BASE OF UR BALANCING WOES

ZANE IS STILL UNUSABLE WITHOUT THE SEEIN’ DEAD CLASS MOD!!!!!!!!!!!

MOZE IS SCREWED BC HER DAMAGE IS TOO RELIANT ON ASE ANOINTMENTS!!

AMARA DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING MELEE BUILD AS THE ADVERTISED MELEE CHARACTER???

FL4K’S HEADCOUNT SKILL IS S T I L L BROKEN EVER SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE MALIWAN TAKEDOWN

ARE YOU GUYS LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY *PLEASEEEEEEE*

BUFF AND FIX THE GODDAMN VAULT HUNTERS

Anointments were a mistake. Damage end-game is wayyyy too reliant on them

anoints should have a maximum of, like, a 20% damage bonus. the damage necessary to kill enemies *should be coming from the VHs themselves*. i don’t care if you have to revamp every single Vault Hunter’s skill trees and buff them all by 9000%. THEY DESERVE IT AT THIS POINT

at the moment in m10 there really isn’t much build diversity *even between Vault Hunters*. We’re all using the same 5 guns (OPQ System. Kaoson. idk. fuckin brainstormer? is that still a thing? jesus fuck) with the same 3 anointments (100% on ASE, cryo while SNTL, and 300% while 90%).

you want to diversify builds like you said during the gameplay reveal???? you want our choice in Vault Hunter to actually fuckin matter???? FIX THEM!!!! THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DEAL DAMAGE WITHOUT STUPID POWERFUL LEGENDARIES AND ANOINTMENTS!!!

Anoints also shouldn’t be common. At all. They should be, like, Pearl rarity. To let that happen, their damage needs to be tuned way the fuck down (again, 20ish % bonus MAX) and ALL ANOINTS NEED TO BE USEFUL IN SOME WAY

NOBODY IS GOING TO USE THE AIRBORNE OR SLIDING ANOINTMENTS JUST REMOVE THEM ALREADY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

obviously these changes can’t happen because they fucked up and buckled down with everything being anointed in m10, but still

imagine a world where the VHs actually did damage on their own without anointments and the damage buff from them was just an incentive to grind for the 100% perfect weapon and NOT A REQUIREMENT TO DEAL DAMAGE

>:(

A majority of gear is borderline worthless at M10

I’m fine with the difficulty of M10, i should let it be known. The enemy health isn’t really the problem IF ALL GUNS ACTED THE SAME AS THE OPQ SYSTEM

ffs.

you know, if you fixed ur vault hunters so they all did damage with just purple weapons (abt the same damage as legendaries w/o special effects) and removed the anointment requirement from late-game play, balancing your guns would be sooo much easier. you know. just saying.

right now only 10% (im being generous) of guns in the game are viable. 90% are worthless. We need AT LEAST 60-70% viable at M10. WHERE IS MY BUILD DIVERSITY. WHY ARE ALL LEGENDARIES NOW JUST “HEY THIS GUN IS STRONGER THAN THE LAST 4 WE RELEASED. HAVE FUN”

how to fix this problem? do as above: BUFF YOUR PLAYER CHARACTERS. MAKE ANOINTMENTS LESS STRONG.

then, at least the 10% already strong weapons would be stupid strong and OP as fuck, BUT AT LEAST WE COULD HAVE BUILD VARIETY!!! I don’t care if other people are dummy strong one-shotting everything in sight. I don’t! so long as they don’t play with me, I couldn’t care less!!! I want to be able to play with the unique, interesting legendaries. instead of the OPQ System. which, by the way, I dislike compared to the normal Q-System. let me use the frozen heart shield and the infiltrator mod. I don’t wanna be chained to the Seein’ Dead anymore :(

honestly at this point im starting to think removing slag was a mistake bc then at least we could use guns that aren’t solely damage-based guns. you know how fucked up you’ve got me that im thinking maybe slag wouldn’t be so bad this time around??? YOU GOT ME FUCKED UP B A D.

FIX THE GAME

IM TAKING A BREAK

MAYBE I’LL BE LESS UPSET WHEN I COME BACK FOR THE DLC BUT HOT. DIGGITY. SHIT.

#borderlands #bl3 #whelp #i needed to get that out #still frustrated...#just... fix the game #please #its so disheartening to see this STILL going on #like i know bl2 had the same problems #with the balancing #remember when they nerfed zer0 and buffed salvador?#but like christ at least they were messing with the vault hunters #now they're trying to brush their problems under the rug and it's really sad to watch #you would think they'd have learned from bl2

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destielfanfic · 4 years

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Group Ask #183

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Also, please check out our Tags Page and see if the fic in question could be found under some plot/ trope/ pairing related tags! And big thanks to all followers who do check out the tags before sending in the ask!!! <333

And even bigger thanks to all folks who help us to find lost fics! You guys are the real MVPs!!!

Ask #1 ( @canismajor3 ): there’s this fic…#1

hiya, hope ur doing okay in lockdown! ive looked everywhere and cannot find this fic, it’s an au and begins with dean fairly isolated (i think it’s a farm?) but he lives on his own and he finds cas out in a storm, he’s very sick and dean nurses him back to health, somewhere along this line cas begins to look after a lamb that deans gives him, it was really good and fairly long defo above 5000 words, thank you for ur help, i created this account just to ask :D

Ask #2 ( @casuallyfangirling31): there’s this fic…#2

Hey, I'm looking for a specific Destiel fic. It's set during season 6. It's about Dean praying to Cas, and just letting the emotions out after watching a documentary about the civil war, which in the fic is a secret interest of his. After that, Cas comes down and Dean helps to dress his wounds, and tells him a bit about the documentary he saw. The documentary mentioned something about soldiers writing letters that weren't exactly PG back home to their wives. Idk the name or the author. Help?

Relevant tags from our Tags Page - #season 6

Ask #3 ( @givemethebooks): there’s this fic…#3

I'm trying to find a story that centers around either Sam and Gabriel's wedding, or Sam and Eileen's. I can't remember which pair is getting married. But since Dean and Cas, who are in a relationship, are always leaving gatherings early, all their friends say that they won't be able to make it through the entire wedding and reception. Various bets are placed as to when during the reception they'll leave, and they end up teaming with Jess to try and rig the betting.

Ask #4 ( @melon-balls17): there’s this fic…#4

Hi I'm looking for a fic, I've read it before but can't remember the name. It's where Dean is a prince/knight. He goes up the mountain to defeat the beast or something and the wind carries him up most of the way. Castiel lives at the top of the mountain in a bungalow like house and is a god or something, his mother is the goddess of beauty, at the end dean defeats her and becomes the god of beauty, and Castiel's mother is cursed to live as a hag on earth until she dies. Any help would be great!!

Found by @educatedinyellow and @fluffysnarkyalpaca!

Lovers in the Dark by jhoom [NC-17, 42,300 word count] Prince Dean is the most beautiful omega anyone’s laid eyes on. Flowers bloom for the chance to see him, animals climb into his room simply to be in his presence, and not a person in the kingdom can say enough for his beauty. He is universally praised for his lovely green eyes, his freckles, his plush lips and the subtly strong lines of his cheekbones. His family hopes to use that to find a good match and secure an alliance for their kingdom.The gods have other plans. Naomi, goddess of beauty, hears more and more tales of the young omega’s beauty and she hates him for it. The fact that mortals and nature alike would hold anyone’s beauty above her own is intolerable. So she sends her son Castiel, god of love, to infect Dean with an undying love for a monstrous person as punishment for his hubris. Fate has plans of its own…[A retelling of the Classical myth “Cupid and Psyche.” Castiel is cast as Cupid, Dean as Psyche, and Naomi as Venus.]

Ask #5 ( @mattiecat ): there’s this fic…#5

Before I joined AO3, I began this fic: it starts as a human AU, where Dean finds a nude raped Cas in his backyard. Cas has amnesia. However, it takes a twist when Crowley shows up. It was WIP then.

Ask #6 ( @browngirlwithdimples): there’s this fic…#6

Hi do you know a destiel fanfic where cas was a new kid at highschool and Dean was a popular rugby player? Cas is a footballer in the fic

Relevant tags from our Tags Page - #High School, #athlete!cas, #athlete!dean

Ask #7 ( @atarnishedcompass ): there’s this fic…#7

Hi! I love your page, and I was hoping if you could help me find a fix that I’ve scored AO3 and Google for. It’s one where Castiel and Dean are college roommates, Castiel is asexual but while studying sees Dean putting a pen in his mouth and realizes he wants him. Then he has a crisis of identity with Charlie who tells him it’s okay that’s demisexual and that labels change. I think Kevin is also ace but I could be wrong. I think rimming is involved, with Cas trying it for the first time

Relevant tags from our Tags Page - #College

Found by @theactualpiemaker!

For Science by shiphitsthefan [NC-17, 6,000 word count] “Think of it like an experiment," says Dean. "You’re testing a hypothesis as to whether or not a desirable response can be achieved through the stimulation of the anus via the application of a willing volunteer’s muscular hydrostat.”Cas raises an eyebrow. “Are you actually trying to use the scientific method to talk me into letting you lick my asshole?”

Ask #8 ( @justjennyj ): there’s this fic…#8

I'm looking for a story in which Jessica is Dean and Cas's surrogate, but a bad accident causes Cas, Jess, and the baby's death. Dean takes off, leaving Sam to deal alone. When he returns, he has a daughter with someone else and eventually has son that he names Castiel. I've spent a lot of time looking for this fic. Please help. Thanks.

Relevant tags from our Tags Page - #tragedy (fics with MCD)

Important Note - these are all lost fic asks we currently have in our Inbox. If you don’t see your ask here or on previous Group Asks, and if you haven’t received private answer from us, please resend the ask! Recently we discovered that if we include links in our answer, there’s a good chance that it will not reach the OP. A lot of our answers have gone missing and we were only able to find it out thanks to contacting our followers directly via DM.

#Group asks #asks #there's this fic #there's this fic...#hey guys #past couple of days have been devastating #we live in uncertain times #stay safe folks

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parasolids · 4 years

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okay let me preface this by saying that as a brown trans person i’m sick of basically giving introductory courses on how racism and transphobia work, but. i feel like there’s a couple major issues with the “google is free”/”not my job to educate people” rhetoric that we really need to address:

1. google is free. left leaning or even center leaning news sites, however, are not. they’re often paywalled, as are most studies. you know what isn’t paywalled? stormfront, breitbart, fox news.

2. transphobes/racists/fascists/etc are literally WAITING for us to lash out over what looks like an innocent question, so they can slide in and hugbox the “victim”. if someone says something transphobic without realizing it’s transphobic, and they get dogpiled, t*rfs are going to show up saying “wow, you don’t deserve that, trans people overreact to things so easily”

recently witnessed this on reddit: a user posted on r/twoxchromosomes, a trans inclusive subreddit for women. the sub rules and pinned post both state in explicit terms that trans women are welcome in the subreddit and that womanhood does not rely on chromosomes alone, but reddit does not allow for subreddit name changes.

said user got banned from the subreddit for asking about how trans people can compete in athletics, confused because trans men have more testosterone than cis women and would therefore have an advantage in womens’ sports. asked if it was true that people believed there was 0 biological difference between cis men and cis women. they admitted to not knowing much about transgender people in general. when they asked the sub moderator why they got banned the mod said “glad we could ruin a bigot’s day!”

the op seemed like they could be arguing in bad faith, and mentioned that the subreddit name of “twoxchromosomes” implied that you can’t be a woman without two x chromosomes so it didn’t even make sense that they got called a bigot. on the off chance they were actually confused, i mentioned that the subreddit was trans inclusive and gave some information about trans/intersex people in athletics, how HRT works and how it makes a trans woman’s biology closer to that of a cis woman than that of a cis man, etc.

and as it turned out, they weren’t asking in bad faith - they were very open minded and while their initial wording was poor, they legitimately wanted to learn about the topic of trans people in athletics!

however even before i got there, t*rfs were already telling the user that it was so unfair that they were being called a bigot, that there was nothing wrong with what they were asking, etc. they continued brigading the thread for hours afterwards

i understand the point that f*scists/t*rfs aren’t going to respect you whether you’re nice or not, but when you’re arguing against one, the point isn’t to change their point of view. the point is to convince the bystanders who may be reading it.

in general, if you don’t understand a view point and one person is visibly frustrated/angry and namecalling, etc, but the other person is making a show of being polite, then it will be easier for the uninformed bystander to be convinced by the person who looks reasonable. even if they’re completely wrong. it’s incredibly frustrating, but it is something that t*rfs/f*scists WILL use to their advantage

#cactus.txt

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years

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After all this waiting, we finally know what the new gala is gonna be like, and it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting in a whole bunch of ways, lmao. But I’m still extremely excited for it.

Since i’ve been saving for this ever since the Gala Alex banner ended, I’m currently sitting on a grand total of 600 summons, so let’s just hope I can get what I want with that.

So firstly we now officially know about Gala Leif being a thing, and man was that a roller-coaster of emotions for me. Mostly I’m just happy he’s finally coming out, but I’m still feeling extremely iffy about him being a wind sword, both because Gala Ranzal already exists, and also because I don’t even do eCiella in co-op anymore. But on the other hand, I’m also feeling kinda smug about correctly guessing that he’s be a support unit with two stances, though that probably wasn’t the hardest thing to guess, lol. But even then, his kit just looks . . . kinda strange. I really think I’ll need to hold back on making any judgments about it one way or another until we get his SP costs and damage mods, since that might really make or break him. His abilities also don’t say anything about his stance mechanic, so there might be additional things it does beyond just changing what his skills do.

On paper I think he just looks odd because the strength and defense debuffs don’t really seem that potent, and his S1 defense buff is self-only, which seems like it wouldn’t really be that great in eCiella anyway, and it wouldn’t be able to trigger doublebuff on everyone. Which is weird since he also has a strength doublebuff chain co-ab, with no apparent way to trigger it for the entire team by himself.

And since he doesn’t seem to give team-wide defense buffs, I’m honestly not sure if he’d actually be able to replace T-Hope’s role in eCiella, but for manual play that might not be a huge deal. He also doesn’t seem to have any heals or buff dispel, so he probably won’t also be replacing Lowen or OG Ranzal. And Sylas provides more potent buffs and debuffs. So I’m worried that Gala Leif might just not be able to find a place in the meta, but we’ll see how it goes. Since he has two attacking skills depending on what stance he’s in, he might be a good DPS unit, if nothing else. Which might also go with his Flurry Strength passive, which seems like a really weird ability to give to what seems like a support unit.

His unique debuff punisher co-ab and his debuff skill time ability are also really interesting, but I’m not sure how that’ll work out.

I just think there’s a big possibility that there’s additional mechanics to his kit that aren’t clear just from reading his skills and abilities, so we’ll have towait and see how he goes in practice. It’s entirely possible that he’s like Tobias, and being in his shielding stance lets him attack from range.

I’m still gonna immediately summon for him anyway and if I end up regretting that then that’ll by my problem, lmao. I’ve waited too long for this dude not to chase him.

They’re also putting the upcoming banner units on the gala, which is . . . extremely weird but also really cool. Considering that stuff like this doesn’t lead to anyone having lower than normal appearance rates, this just means that when I chase after Gala Leif I’ll have a good chance at getting some of these units too. Which would be nice, since I was already thinking that they might really tempt me.

It’s also just kinda funny that after finding out about the Xuan Zang alt I got worried that she’d be the new gala unit, which I knew wasn’t gonna happen, but then she ended up actually being on the gala banner anyway even if she’s not the gala unit, lol.

I hope this becomes a trend going forward, since it’d be a great way to give me a shot at non-limited banner units even if I just save for galas exclusively.

Anyway, these new units are the new batch of non-limited light units we’ve been desperately needing, and they look really nice. They still suffer from the fact that there’s no important fights to actually use them in until the shadow Agito boss comes out in like three months, but at least we can use them in this event.

I honestly couldn’t tell what weapon type the Xuan Zang alt was meant to be since she uses a unique weapon model in her boss battle, and she also dies way too fast for me to see her animations, so it’s nice to get confirmation that she’s a wand unit.

In general, Radiant Xuan Zang basically looks like a more tanky version of Peony, which is really interesting. I wonder if anyone will feel bad for summoning for Peony, lol. I think they’re different enough that it doesn’t matter, but they’re still really similar in a lot of ways.

Even though her DPS might not be as high as Peony’s, I do really like how Xuan Zang’s new kit looks. Her S1 strength debuff reminds me a lot of Sylas’, and she also has a shadow resistance buff on her S2. So if that sort of damage mitigation is good in the shadow Agito fight, that’d be really nice. She can also inspire the entire team with her enhanced S2, which seems to effect the entire team and not just people she’s near, so that might have a surprisingly big impact on her team DPS contribution. I think this also makes her the first light unit with inspiration, which is cool.

She also gets the new debuff skill time ability like Gala Leif does, which is cool. I guess that’ll probably be given to new units every once in a while now. The fact that it also covers bleed is really interesting, especially since there’s currently no way to have it apply to anyone who actually inflicts bleed, so maybe they’re laying the foundation for that to happen later. And since we have buff time prints, maybe we’ll get debuff time prints, which could be really useful on certain characters.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that when she maxes her charge gauge, she can lower an enemy’s paralysis resistance level. It sounds like a one-time, permanent effect, but it might have a real impact on team DPS if you rely on paralysis punishing, since this should effectively prolong the amount of uptime you can have on paralysis. It also opens up the possibility of other characters in other elements getting this sort of ability for other status effects, which could really increase the viability of certain units, especially if we get someone who can do this sort of thing for something like bog or blind resistance.

Other than how much she seems to be competing with Peony, my main worry with her is probably that her charge gauge mechanic might hold her back, and lead to her having low uptime on stuff like the strength buff it lets her give the team. Not to mention the fact that it’s an AoE buff effect, not a universal team one, so you might not be able to give it to everyone. It sounds like the amount her charge gauge gets boosted depends on how many teammates are within her AoE field when she uses her S2, so her potential seems to really depend on whether or not everyone’s grouped close to each other.

I honestly wasn’t super interested in her when we first saw her, but the fact that she’ll be on the same banner as Gala Leif makes me a lot more interested in picking her up, and I do really like how her kit looks. I already have Chitose, but I didn’t get Peony, so Xuan Zang might be worth getting. I also just appreciate that she’s effectively a non-limited light strength buff unit, which the element’s really needed for a long time now. It’s not quite as straight-forward as how Chitose’s buffs work, but it’s something.

I also just honestly really like her as a character, and like with Wu Kong I have a lot of nostalgia toward her because her event was the first one I actually got into when I started playing the game. I never really use her welfare version, so it’d be great to be able to use her alt.

Though even more than her, as soon as I saw Zhu Bajie and it became obvious he was gonna be a banner unit, I got really tempted to chase him, lol. Which is another reason why i’m glad that these units are getting bundled into the same banner as Leif. I don’t really need any light units any time soon in general, but I still really want him, and it’d be nice to not have to dream summon him.

In terms of his kit, I don’t really like enmity units in general, but he does look really strong on paper. We’ll have to see his exact damage mods, but the fact that he can manually lower his health while also having Resilient Offense seems like a really good combo. Sadly the shield he gets is just a regular shield like Natalie’s, but it does it’s job. It’s interesting that his S2 also makes it so that he can’t be healed for ten seconds. I’m not sure if that actually works well with his kit or not, since on the one hand he wants to stay at low health as much as possible, but he also needs to dip in and out of low HP to trigger Resilient Offense. He also has a unique force-strike via his ability that has a multi-step charge like the MH units, which gives him knockback res and has paralysis punisher mods.

Light doesn’t really have the sort of support for enmity kits that shadow does via Grace’s shield utility, but I think he has a lot of potential to be a really good DPS unit, and honestly light really needs more of that, in terms of non-limited units. It’s also nice that he’s an axe, since I didn’t get DY-Malora, and I don’t use S-Luca anymore now that I have G-Luca.

It’s probably worth noting that even though there’s not currently someone like Grace for light, Xuan Zang has her strength debuffs and her team shadow res buffs that should help make Zhu Bajie a lot more tanky if you use them together.

And then there’s the wildcard in the form of Sha Wujing, who isn’t actually described in the blog post they put out because he’s a 4-star. Which is kinda lame, but considering that they’re bundling this with Gala Leif AND also including a new 5-star dragon, I get why they relegated him to being a 4-star.

But either way, he might be a really interesting unit. There’s nothing to go on, but him being a 4-star isn’t an automatic strike against the idea of him being really good. There’s just lots of different things they could do with him.

Basically my main two options I’m thinking about at the moment are in effectively being a light version of Emma, or a light version of Heinwald. It’d be great to get a dedicated, non-limited light strength buffer, but Xuan Zang can kinda do that too, and I’m not really sure if him being a lance unit or something with strength buffs really ‘fits’ his whole vibe. But on the other hand, I really like the idea of him being sort of like Heinwald but for light. It’s been over a year since our last light healer came out, so it’d be really nice to get another one. And tbh as a character he really reminds me of Heinwald, so it’d make sense if they end up being similar units. But who knows.

And finally we’re also getting a new light dragon for this banner, who seems to basically just be light Freyja, except her dragon skill only energizes the team instead of also healing them. Which is a bit lame, but light already has Cupid who can heal everyone, so it’s not a big deal. Either way I’d really like to get a copy of her to use on my light support/healer units.

Interestingly it seems like they’re all still gonna appear on the next banner once the gala ends, but I think this is by far going to be the best time to get them, unless they intentionally increase their appearance rates for their banner or something. Being able to get all of them AND Gala Leif from the same banner is way too good of a deal to pass up.

Also this means that we’re not getting a split banner for this event [at least not in the same way we’ve had with recent events], so that’s great. We’re still probably gonna get more split banners in the future, but it’s nice to have all these units on one banner.

I should probably hold off on my summoning spree until we know how good the new units are [especially since Gala Leif looks like he might be underwhelming in practice], but I’ve been saving for two months for this, so I don’t think I’m gonna be able to restrain myself, lol. Depending on how long I summon for, I might have to actually keep notes of what I get so I can remember it all.

Realistically it might be best for me to just stop if/when I get Gala Leif and then save for the next gala, but with the event units being on the gala banner as well, they might tempt me to keep pulling. We’ll just see how it goes, I guess.

#dragalia lost #cygames really said fuck gala ranzal rights huh? u_u

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dramarising-replacement · 6 years

Text

an example of why you should keep your account secure

*also, an excellent example of remembering the human!

prepare for awful formatting and an intermittent use of images!

i mean, everyone should understand this already, but it’s a funny situation anyway so i’m going to share it.

earlier today (jan 6th or something) i saw a post in the help board asking about how a user might be able to attain dragons they have lost to an account compromise.

i couldn’t get a screenshot because the thread was quickly deleted by mods (it mentioned a players username specifically so it may have been considered a call-out post), but the situation was that a friend (we’ll call them IR) of user SD (the OP) had their account compromised by their sister, and the sister had sent 3 dragons to another user (OR). players told SD that, unless OR wanted to give them back, there’s no way to force them per FR’s T&C or something like that.

well guess what! i felt bad, oops. with a weeks worth of notn and baldwin mat treasure behind me, i was determined to get this poor motherfucker’s dragon’s back, because tidelord knows how pitiful i’d feel if this happened to me.

now usually, someone might be willing to give said dragons back, but well… IR took a more direct approach:

[x]

hehe, “fluff off.” it’s funny, sorry. anyway.

i pm’d SD to understand the situation a bit more. i’ve omitted some messages because they restate some info. i’m just going to straight copy-paste since i’m honestly lazy and FR’s messaging system is about as functional as a potato battery:

me: hey there, which dragons did your friend lose? maybe i can help trying to get them back :o SD: derg1, derg2, and derg3. OR is the person with them. SD: What the person did was very disrespectful tbh…* I can tell they’re a new player though so I don’t really blame them, but they have the children of my two favorite dragons so this is why I’m kinda upset about this happening… me: understandably so! just let your friend know (as said in the thread) they need to reset their password as soon as possible. i’m trying to get in contact with OR, and if anything comes up i will let you know.

(*i guess they were taking about OR but OR did nothing wrong? lmao i just wanted the dragons given back without too much bad blood :’))

because of that exchange (IR to OR) one might say that IR doesn’t necessarily deserve the dragons by this point, but I already stuck my feet in by contacting SD so I might’ve as well gotten dirty before taking a shower.

this is what i sent OR:

[x]

and they replied:

[x]

they were willing to negotiate a payment so we swapped for the dragons. we agreed to 100,000t (my choice, since it was just a really big bad clusterfuck and i felt bad) ((and jegus, i’m sorry OR, if you’re reading this. you didn’t deserve IR/SD’s tomfuckery, lmao))

when getting the dragons i sent them back to IR. they were super happy to get them back and honestly? i’m not even upset. i actually feel pretty good. they wanted to pay me back and i was like naw dude, just don’t be a goose about your account. i really wanted to ask them to apologize to OR but i’m no-one’s mom, and i just wanted to give back y'all’s dragons. they can sort that jazz out if they wanted.

takeaway? don’t be an asshole! (although tbf they do seem to be very young so it’s kind of unavoidable? but c'mon there’s a fine line dudes, get it together…)

i’m just all around happy that this exchange did not bite me directly in the ass. because it totally could have yeeted my wallet and me into next tuesday.

also, it helps to be a little diplomatic in these sorts of situations. i’m all out surprised OR was willing to cut a deal at all. they could have totally spite exalted, cuss me out, block me. there should have been better communication between the trio but honestly, it couldn’t have gone any better and i’m really happy it worked out :’)

#Drama #Rant #Cursing #Long post #Petty #Newbies #submission

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hazu-against-bull-blog · 6 years

Text

I am here to address a big masterpost so excuse me if this is extremely long. The post is here but please don't harass anyone involved.

-Stolen Art/Assests/Designs 1. Yes, I agree that this was a bad thing to do, he should have just got a stock image or even got one of his volunteers to draw it for him. If I were him I would have just apologized and either a, took the video down or b, edited the video to get rid of the image.

2. By looking at the images for the Gym MMD stage, they are in fact the same. (Although they linked an edit and not the original poster?) The poster (saler1 on DA) said that the files came from "The Basketball Anime" and before that someone else commented "Am I allowed to use rip games? Like is there a legal issue?" and the poster responded "You're allowed to use this stuff." The poster said they exported it from 3dcg, which means that this MMD model is not their original model. I tried looking for the original model but I couldn’t find it, if anyone else can, please tell me! ***EDIT after typing all of that, I saw a comment from saler1; the conversation goes as follows: Deactivated User: “I THINK U DO EVERYTHING OF YANDERE SIM” saler1 “NO I DON”T!!!! I HATE YANDERE SIM!!!” DU “Yan dev is taking ur models XD” saler1 “No he is not...I’ve answered this a million times already. I got the stage through a paid for mod that is easy to convert to mmd or .x format. He is not stealing anything from anyone and is using a free model and put it in his free game.” DU “dont reply that” saler1 “It’s true! He said it himself that it is just a placeholder because the people making the 3d backgrounds suck and are very slow.” So in short: this whole “stolen assets” point is false. 3. I can assume that what happened in the above #2 is somewhat the same here. They said that they converted it using a mod. 4 and 5 are the same as #3 6. I honestly don’t know what this is referring to. A drawing that looks like the character “Nemesis” that was posted 1/14/2017. If the OP was trying to say that YanDev copied this image for Nemesis, that wouldn’t be possible since Nemesis was implemented in the December 16th 2016 build of the game. 7. Not crediting artists is bad, yes, I agree he should have done so and not used their art after they left. But tbh those models would not have suited the game. 8. Although I see the similarities in the pattern, he could have had a volunteer do that and they just happened to make a similar pattern. I am not saying he couldn’t have stole the pattern, just giving a reason why it couldn’t have been. 9. Yes, they are similar but it could have been suggested by a volunteer or the like, or perhaps even send in by the original person who drew the image. Either way, according to the comments of the post, the creator of the drawing, Lucfu on DA, seemed to be fine that they are similar. There was nothing to be mad about here. 10. Oh no!! Dev used a similar design of a cute bear that pays homage to another cute bear!! They aren’t even the same image, everyone needs to calm down. 11. Finally, something to be mad about. Stealing art for shadow images in a video is probably not the best thing to do, even if others do it before you. Read #1 for more input on this topic. 12. Link is broken. 13. Yes, it was probably a bad thing to put it in your game to show them, but still, it is no longer in the game so this should probably not be a big concern anymore.

Points that actually are worth asking Dev about: #1, #7, #8, #11 (4/13) Ok so bullet one, “Stolen Art/Assets/Designs” was pretty long. I might have to separate each bullet point into a new post so it doesn’t spread across your entire dash.

#yandere simulator criticism #yandere simulator crit #yansim criticism #yansim crit #yandev crit #long post

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zennicai · 3 years

Text

I posted 252 times in 2021

34 posts created (13%)

218 posts reblogged (87%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 6.4 posts.

I added 90 tags in 2021

#saints row - 26 posts

#sr - 26 posts

#shitzennicaisays - 19 posts

#sotwzennicai - 11 posts

#like deadass - 2 posts

#im not saying but im just saying - 2 posts

#zennicai is trying to say something - 1 posts

#lets fucking go yall like fr fr - 1 posts

#real goon hours - 1 posts

#those fake og clowns wouldn't last a day in the streets fr fr - 1 posts

Longest Tag: 106 characters

#also trying to write this damn fic for a year now but writers block is battering my brain against the wall

My Top Posts in 2021

See the full post

9 notes • Posted 2021-09-06 10:24:23 GMT

oh yeah, this thing about co-op in the reboot.

So there’s this mission skip feature where if you or your friend joins during any part of the game like mid or late and then play single-player until you reach that point in the game and then when you do play co-op again, it skips that mission and goes onto the next.

I hope I made this post clear but like......what the fuck lol? (hopefully, we can toggle this off cause that’s gonna make people not understand plot points and that would be YIKES.)

https://youtu.be/MYknUlrqDHg?t=1774 <- the aforementioned feature mentioned here.

11 notes • Posted 2021-10-11 00:42:56 GMT

See the full post

11 notes • Posted 2021-09-03 21:54:05 GMT

small thought for today.

Me no wanna hear shit about the Saints Row reboot’s graphics being bad when the GTA remaster trilogy looks flat and soulless. The balls on Take-Two to take down much better graphics mods for the games and such just for Rockstar to make such a tacked on remaster.

annnnd that’s my thought for today. goon, out!

11 notes • Posted 2021-10-22 20:16:25 GMT

I like the fact Volition is stepping up their worldbuilding game for the reboot. Stilwater in Saints Row 2 was phenomenal with all the lore and little details you spot throughout the city. Steelport was pretty forgettable for me as there wasn’t a lot of worldbuilding behind it other than a few things like the supposed Steelport racing scene. I’m more than excited to explore Santo Ileso even more.

Also my friend, @megafreeman found it weird that the Boss gets to be a tourist in the city while also being from that city....(I mean, maybe they’re not actually from Santo Ileso but idk whatever.)

17 notes • Posted 2021-10-29 02:53:06 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

0 notes

kawaiiwhisperschaos · 4 years

Text

Kanye 808s And Heartbreak Zip

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808s & Heartbreak is the fourth studio album by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released November 24, 2008 on Roc-A-Fella Records.It was recorded after the death of his mother and breakup of a relationship and has a very different sound compared to his previous albums.

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Kanye West 808 Heartbreak Zip

EDITORS’ NOTES

Kanye turns unbearable pain into haunted, stark electro-pop on this daring album, embracing electronic chill and ‘80s New Wave to express his suffering and isolation. His Auto-Tuned voice aches over sharp, icy piano and harsh Roland TR-808 drumbeats on “Love Lockdown” and turns aggressively wrathful as a buzzsaw synth propels “See You in My Nightmares.” Ye moves into stirring, art-pop melodrama on “RoboCop,” but his gut-wrenching vulnerability is clearest on the minimalist electro-pop of “Coldest Winter”—a frostbitten, Tears for Fears-sampling goodbye to his late mother.

EDITORS’ NOTES

TITLETIME 13

Pinocchio Story (Freestyle Live From Singapore) [Bonus Track]

14 Songs, 1 Hour 1 Minute

Released: Nov 21, 2008

℗ 2008 Roc-A-Fella Records, LLC

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chariot313 · 4 years

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Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started.

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 4 years

Text

THE SEEIN’ DEAD MOD IS A BAND-AID FIX

gearbox locked zane’s lazy fix behind a paywall

tl;dr: for the love of god, the seein’ dead class mod should be what the seein’ red capstone is and vice versa. also. MORE SYNERGY. also i redesigned all of Zane’s trees and augments for more synergy you’re welcome.

is 1am and i don’t want tomorrow and im angry and thinking about borderlands so this seems like the perfect time to immerse myself in remaking Zane’s skill trees (for the 5th time). mainly because some of zane’s skills are still irking me and i’ve written extensive essays for the bl3 subreddit about the seein’ dead class mod and just playing around with zane’s skills in general, but i don’t think i’ve ever posted here before about it. so here we are. i notice i usually save lore/theories/characterizations for this blog and meta/balancing/gear talk for reddit. not sure why that’s a split for me.

now i’ve remade zane’s skills a number of times, but honestly this was all before the seein’ dead mod was released. then, instead of fixing his skill trees, i wrote a lot of essays about why that mod was a terrible bad decision on gearbox’s part (you can read one of the shorter arguments in a comment from 5 months ago here). I’m just gonna remake the skill trees now with all his current abilities in mind.this post really should be titled: ALL THE PROBLEMS WITH THEIR BALANCING DECISIONS

so imma just talk for a bit about why i love/hate the seein’ dead class mod.

Obviously it’s a god tier mod, and you see almost no zane builds without it, and no top tier, can solo m10 true takedown builds without it (unless ur like, the 1% of masochistic players, in which case i salute you). and while that obviously means its a good mod, it also shows the problems with all his other class mods and his skill trees in general.

They all kinda suck. and that wouldn’t be a problem, bc, hey, the seein’ dead mod is ez to get, just pop on over to the casino and kill a few baddies and they’ll drop like candy. Which is really awesome!

slight problem.

the dlc is locked behind a PAYWALL

now this is a problem because if zane was a top tier character BEFORE the dlc, and everything was hunky dory and people weren’t on their knees begging for gearbox to fix Zane, then him getting a new badass class mod wouldn’t be such a big deal. but the problem was this was gearbox’s solution to giving Zane a buff.

they literally locked a buff for a character behind a pay wall.

I recommend Zane is every single person I try to convince to play bl3, but i always have to add this like, commercial-esque asterisk. you know, terms and conditions or, side effects or whatever. *you probably want to get the seein’ dead mod if you’re looking at end-game play because unless you wanna struggle that’s his only viable play style.

what if they don’t want to buy the dlc?! for real...

There’s also the point that this class mod makes his (arguably) BEST capstone obsolete. so we have distributed denial which literally no one uses because its broken, double barrel which is always traded for seein’ red or more points in other skills, and seein’ red, WHICH WAS MADE USELESS BY THIS CLASS MOD

gsfdhjikdhgdaskjfhgaskdfjh

okay and it wouldn’t even be so bad

IF THEY DIDN’T CHANGE HIS ENTIRE SKILL SET BEFORE RELEASE

like they lowered ALL his kill skills, then they turned Seein’ Red into his capstone instead of Death Follows Close, meaning they nerfed Death Follows Close so it could fit as just a game changer. my poor boy was g u t t e d.

so, imagine this, everyone is reaching the end-game content of bl3. it’s a month or 2 weeks or whatever after the game dropped and people are finally hitting level 50. and moze/fl4k/amara are all killin’ it, and the zane players have to work their ASSES off to do like... 50% of that damage output (now, they did also eventually nerf the crap outta moze and fl4k but the point stands).

so instead of gearbox going: “oh... shit that pre-release nerf was an awful idea, revert the changes guys” they decided to keep him gutted and then they released what was, in my opinion, a kick in the nuts with the maliwan takedown (aka the antifreeze mod, alongside the spiritual driver) ahahahahahaha. what good times it was. (I say this sarcastically.)

man i remember people were soooo livid with that class mod release. well, both of them. zane mains were pissed off (for good reason). “yes, let’s make the people who are begging for a straight damage increase jump through MORE hoops (LITERALLY) for a pitiful amount of damage. oh, also, let’s give their 28 skill point build to the strongest character in the game for free and also make it 10x better”. because it was 10x better than violent momentum (driver didn’t have a damage cap) until they fixed both the spiritual driver and the violent momentum skill. it was the worst of times.

i will note here they did, around this time, let zane have stackable kill skills, but it was only 2 stacks and also it was still *incredibly* difficult to achieve stacks because zane just. struggled to kill anything. I still remember when i grinded the shit outta an antifreeze class mod and it took me over 20 minutes to kill Wotan my first time solo on m4. Not the fight UP to wotan. literally. just killing wotan.

then the seein’ dead mod dropped and i had. a fuckin. 15 minute decrease to my time on killing wotan (5 minutes!!!!). now i am not perfect, and i 100% believe i could’ve lowered the time even more. but that... that shows a VERY CLEAR problem.

they never actually fixed zane, they gave him a class mod that’s stupid OP just to make sure he could hang on next to the other Vault Hunters. it’s just a bandaid fix. you remove the class mod, and he’s back to pre-jackpot power levels (which will NOT hold up at m10, let me tell you).

all his pre-jackpot problems are still here, and that’s why people are not using any other class mod of his. I bet we could have some really fun builds with the conductor mod! but nobody will ever use it because it’s just... not even close to the seein’ dead mod.

So what does the seein’ dead mod do that makes Zane so good?

IT BRINGS HIM BACK TO PRE-RELEASE VALUES

this mod, plus Death Follows Close, brings Zane back to pre-release zane. and i don’t understand how gearbox isn’t putting two and two together and going “Oh.”

it also is a BETTER VERSION of Seein’ Red!!! something players could have had at, like, level 15, but instead had to wait until they hit a capstone! the capstone is completely obsolete at this point. There is nothing seein’ red can give you that seein’ dead doesn’t do but better. Getting that capstone is a w a s t e of skill points.

AND they locked this fix behind a pay wall!!! i cannot say that enough. you don’t wanna get the handsome jackpot dlc?? guess u don’t wanna play zane at endgame then. too bad, so sad.

have i stated that enough? because it still blows my fuckin mind. THEY LOCKED A CHARACTER FIX BEHIND A PAYWALL

djhdgakjhakjdah. imagine playing without any prior knowledge and being like, aw man i love this zane character. can’t wait to get to max mayhem end game like all my favorite youtubers and friends!! then finding out you gotta drop 15 bucks or whatever it is just to actually be able to play at max mayhem level. that is not a skill difference, that is A BALANCING PROBLEM MY DUDES. like. my favorite zer0 build was still viable without the story DLCs. obviously grog > rubi, pimp > lyuda, rapier > law but, it was still fuckin viable.

guh. gufhgufhsdgkfjsdh. it bothers me.

ok so there’s a lot i just went over: my main issue? is that by making Seein’ Red a capstone, they did nothing to make it an actual legit capstone. They definitely nerfed Death Followed Close to make it a gamechanger, but they never gave Seein’ Red a buff to move it from a gamechanger to a capstone. It was the same exact skill. Seein’ Dead is what Seein’ Red SHOULD be and that’s what angers the crap outta me. they locked this obvious fix behind a pay wall (AND a gear slot!!!!!) n ur probably thinking ‘but cruddy this WAS really nice of them to try and fix zane... they could’ve just let him be suuc’ and like, yeah, they could’ve, and it is good they’re TRYING, but also, they’re leaving the people who DON’T buy the DLC high and dry.

keep in mind i DO own the dlc. have the season pass and everything. IM STILL MAD!!!

Zane should be strong no matter what class mod the players want to use. Same with Amara, same with Moze, same with Fl4k. FFS, it is not that hard. CHANGE THEIR SKILLS!!!!!

so im gonna be taking the time to go over all of zane’s skills and shit just to put him more on par with the others (WITHOUT THE SEEIN’ DEAD MOD)

imagine the seein’ dead mod doesn’t exist for this. we’re gonna make a balanced character since apparently THAT’S TOO HARD FOR A TRIPLE-A BALANCING TEAM

first things first, the tree with the most fuckin problems:

Under Cover

oh god this tree is a fucking train wreck what the hell were they thinking. good god. my eyes. they’re burning.

not actually, but it still kinda sucks.

Action Skill: Barrier is fine. I would not add the ‘picking it up decreases benefits’ when Zane’s whole schtick is running around fast. You get the full bonus no matter what form it’s in. also, you can hold down the action skill activation button to deploy the barrier directly on yourself.

Tier 1: Hearty Stock is a trap. never get this. so dumb. no synergy with his other skills. Adrenaline is okay, but not really great during end game. Ready For Action is similarly okay. Just a very MEH start to this tree.

Adrenaline: Zane gains increased Action Skill Cooldown Rate. 10% per level, up to 50%. this shouldn’t be tied to his shields being full because if your barrier is down (cooling DOWN)... your shield is taking damage. c’mon now. THINK GEARBOX T H I N K

Hearty Stock: (maxed) Zane and his clone gain 5% magazine regeneration while an action skill is active. This skill stacks. In it’s original state, this skill is such a trap skill. for real.

Ready For Action: i mean, it’s fine. We’ll keep it. +30% shield recharge rate and -29% (why????) recharge delay

Tier 2: ech. Stiff Upper Lip is not that good. Brain freeze is what u really want. Rise to the Occasion is also okay.

Brain Freeze: keep the same.

Stiff Upper Lip: when Zane is damaged with a hit that would break his shield, he gains (max) +20% bonus gun damage on his next shot through the barrier.

Rise to the Occasion: Zane and his clone gain health regeneration. +5% max health/s. Not determined by shield availability.

Tier 3: `screams in confident competence` oh lawd. this skill is good. the accuracy thing is kinda laughable. i tell you, i always thought that zane was originally meant to be the sniper with the Under Cover tree but they decided to swap Zane and Fl4k’s skills. which is why Zane has soooo many accuracy buffs.

Confident Competence: fine the way it is. I would also add, since this IS a game changer, that the Barrier’s damage amp is now 40%.

Tier 4: ew. tier 4. Really Expensive Jacket is literally the only skill you might want to get and EVEN THEN. ugh. Best Served Cold is so pointless. and so is Futility Belt. YOU TAKE MORE DAMAGE WITH IT

Really Expensive Jacket: Elemental Status Effects have reduced duration (-50%). Additionally, Zane is not slowed by Cryo anymore.

Best Served Cold: Remove the cooldown. Buff up the damage at least 200%. Make it an AOE Brain Freeze. That is, the cryo novas stack and if overkill damage is high enough, enemies hit with the novas freeze. Kinda like a discount Frozen Heart.

Futility Belt: HA. Ahahahahaha. Ha. Zane gains resistance to non-elemental and cryo damage (+15%). Futhermore, after killing an enemy, Zane’s barrier gains additional cryo damage (+20%) for 8s.

Tier 5: is oki. My only real complaint is with Nerves of Steel. Like. Seriously.

Refreshment: god tier skill actually. Keep the same.

Best Served Cold: also keep the same. The only change I will make is this: resetting your action skills’ cooldowns counts as action skill start and end.

Nerves of Steel: The longer Zane’s barrier is active, the more stacks of Nerves of Steel he gains (a maximum of 15). For each stack, Zane gains 2% shock damage, 2% cryo efficiency, and 1% damage to frozen enemies. (why shock damage? cryo doesn’t do well against shields.)

Tier 6: *cries in the worst capstone in the entire series* WHO DID THIS. WHY. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU???

Distributed Denial: no. just. no. scrap this whole damn thing. IT DOESN’T EVEN WORK!!!! either fix it COMPLETELY or do something else. My recommendation? Whenever Zane throws down his barrier, his shield instantly begins recharging. If Zane’s shield is already full or recharging, enemies with no shields (or freeze immunity) that touch Zane’s Barrier for the next 10s are instantly frozen.

Augments: why the hell do i gotta place my barrier down when my entire fuckin’ character is about RUNNING. ALSO JUST AS A BLANKET STATEMENT: ALL THESE AUGMENTS WORK 100% EVEN IF HIS BARRIER IS PICKED UP. SO DUMB. a fully pointless restriction.

that last sentence immediately fixes Charged Relay and Nanites or Some Shite.

Redistribution: If his shields are full, Zane can sacrifice 50% of his shields to have his next shot deal 100% bonus cryo damage by holding F.

All-Rounder: Fine as is. Only thing I would add: whenever Zane melees an enemy, his shields are drained by 50% and his sliding augment is added to the melee attack.

Deterrence Field: Fine as is. But! I would add: whenever Zane sprints into an enemy, his shields are drained by 50% and slam augment is activated.

THAT WAY we can have both slam/sliding relics actually DO SOMETHING. because my god they’re so useless rn.

alright, moving on.

Hitman

Tier 1: is okay. nobody ever takes cold bore. ever.

Violent Speed: fine as is, but we’re taking it back to pre-release values. Max: 30%. can stack 2x.

Cold Bore: Zane gains (max) 20% bonus cryo damage to all shots fired while moving.

Violent Momentum: fine as is, but taking it back to pre-release values. 30% gun damage at default walk speed. Additionally, Zane can now shoot while sprinting.

Tier 2: my boy zoomer needs more fun.

Cool Hand: fine as it is. I would buff his base reload speed up to 20% and kill skill reload to 20% as well. 17 and 13 are such weird numbers.

Drone Delivery: fine as it is. Additionally, Zoomer’s base shots now take on the element of Zane’s grenade mod.

Salvation: fine as it is. I won’t mess with this bc life steal is messy business (coughs in grog)

Tier 3: hhhynf.fdsg.

Death Follows Close: Kill Skill Bonus: +30%. Kill Skill Time: +7s. Additionally, enemies targeted by Zoomer take 5% more damage from Zane.

Tier 4: these two skills are actually p dope by themselves. it can stay as it is. I would MAYBE increase the violent violence max buff up to 20% but that’s just me.

Tier 5: ahahahaha. this skill. just remember, we’re pretending Seein’ Dead doesn’t exist, so imagine how this skill looks next to calm cool n collected. so pointless.

Good Misfortune: Killing an enemy with a critical hit adds (max) 10% efficiency to Zane’s kill skills for 8s. This does not stack.

Tier 6: WE’RE GONNA MAKE YOU RELEVANT AGAIN BOO HANG IN THERE

Seein’ Red: Zane has a (4%) chance to activate his kill skills upon dealing gun damage to an enemy. Additionally, enemies targeted by Zoomer now take 15% more damage from Zane.

so why didn’t we make good misfortune the infinite action skill build?? BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT CCnC IS SUPPOSED TO DO!!! why have 2 skills that do the exact same thing AT THE EXACT SAME TIER except ONE IS OBJECTIVELY WORSE!!!!!

what happens to the Seein’ Dead class mod if we’re giving its perk to this capstone? I’m so glad you asked. “Zane activates his kill skills when activating his action skills. Additionally, the kill skills activated this way have 15% more efficiency”. look how much better balanced that is!!!! that’s a class mod!!!!!!!!

Augments: these aren’t THAT bad, but they could be a lot better.

Winter’s Drone: Zoomer gains 20% bonus cryo damage to all shots.

Bad Dose: pump these numbers up. Fire Rate: +7% per affected enemy. Movement Speed: +10% per enemy. everything else is fine.

Boomsday: just make this more beefy. fr. It’d be a good choice if it were stronger.

Static Field: also fine. I would again give it better damage output, but that’s just me.

Almighty Ordnance: remove the build up honestly. Like i get the vibe and it’s really cool, but in combat it just DOESN’T WORK. maybe if Zoomer is targeting an enemy, he will unleash the missiles if they are above 50% health after 30s or something. I honestly think these should have a debuffing factor instead of a damage factor (you know, to not get in the way of boomsday). maybe something around 15%? the 1x per action skill activation thing would be easily subverted with CCnC with the changes we suggested, so it could work.

Doubled Agent

ahhh, Blane. Blue Zane. Love ya, buddy. One change: he prioritizes pinged targets. That way you can kinda get him to fight specific people. Also, lower the teleportation timer. pls.

Tier 1: actually p good. could be better, but its not bad.

Synchronicity: Zane gains 20% bonus damage per active action skill. While Zane has an action skill active, he gains a stack of Synchronicity. Max Stacks: 10. For each stack of Synchronicity, Zane gains 5% Action Skill Cooldown Rate and 2% Action Skill Damage.

Praemunitus: Zane and his digiclone gain (max) 30% magazine size.

Borrowed Time: For each action skill active, Zane gains 30% action skill duration. The longer Zane’s action skills are active, he and Blane gain a higher Fire Rate and faster Reload Speed, up to 20%. (the idea is you choose between this or synchronicity bc... either permanent action skills build or fast paced action skills build)

Tier 2: Donnybrook is fun. Fractal Frags is fun. Duct tape mod is a GODDAMN DISAPPOINTMENT

Donnybrook: fine as it is. I might buff the max numbers up to 20% gun damage and 3% health regen. But that’s really it.

Fractal Frags: Blane will periodically toss a grenade from Zane’s stockpile at his targeted enemy (cooldown: 20s). Kill Skill: Blane has a 45% chance to throw a free grenade.

Duct Tape Mod: this skill... why... No cooldown. NONE. Zane has a 1% chance to also fire a grenade from his gun. Kill Skill: This is increased to 15% for 8s (stays at 1% for the whole time, but the kill skill will increase by 3% for each tier)

Tier 3: Actually Quick Breather is one of my favorite skills. this can stay.

Quick Breather: Same as is. Additionally, Zane and his clone gain 25% Gun Damage after swapping places for a short time (8s). I really wanna promote swapping places. It’s really underutilized. they’ve ADDED stuff to this skill already!!! even tho it didn’t work until the next patch. BUT THEY SHOW ITS POSSIBLE TO ADD TO SKILLS!!!

Tier 4: actually a really good tier. a few minor changes.

Pocket Full of Grenades: Kill Skill: Zane gains (max) 15% grenade regeneration for 8s. If Zane’s grenades are full, any excess grenades are shot from his gun with 25% bonus damage.

Old-U: If Zane falls into FFYL while his digiclone is active, he can press the action skill activation key to destroy his clone and gain a second wind. When he does this, he takes the place of his clone. His clone will also drop a grenade when it is destroyed.

Supersonic Man: Zane gains increased movement speed for each active action skill: (max) 15% each. Additionally, teleportation is considered to be Zane’s maximum speed for its duration and 5s after.

Tier 5: oh god oh fuck oh god.

Like a Ghost: Oh god why. Zane and his digiclone gain a (max) 15% chance to ignore all damage while teleporting and for 7s after.

Boom. Enhance: actually a pretty swell skill. I would probably add Health Regen +3% per grenade tho. Blane needs help a lot.

Trick of the Light: bring back the shock damage. Zane deals 40% bonus shock damage for 7s after swapping places with his clone.

Tier 6: oh ngl I actually love this capstone lol

Double Barrel: Zane’s digiclone gains a copy of Zane’s current gun when it is deployed (and all the anointments work and he actually fires it like a reasonable person). Zane’s clone now deals damage equal to Zane’s base weapon damage. Upon swapping places, both Zane and his digiclone deal 50% bonus damage for 7s.

Augments:

Binary System: is okay. Kinda uhhh underwhelming tho. Buff up the damage and also maybe reduce teleportation time.

Schadenfreude: I like this one a lot. Zane’s shield is restored by 100% of the damage his digiclone takes and vice versa.

Dopplebanger: lower the waiting time. I get that u don’t wanna override the teleportation, but it’s really annoying. Buff damage and don’t make it dependent on action skill duration. If this explosion kills an enemy, the clone is reactivated with 50% action skill duration.

Which One’s Real?: I’ve never actually felt this work. Maybe for like 2 seconds? Make it work more like Zer0′s hologram or Timmy’s Jack clones or smth. Maybe give an activation cue? im v lost with this one. Enemies targeting Zane take 30% more damage from the digiclone.

Digital Distribution: 75% of the health damage Zane takes is distributed to his clone instead. The digiclone gains 5% Health Regeneration/s and sends out 3 [level specific damage] shock spikes to enemies that attack it.

literally all Zane needs is SYNERGY. if they can change a few skills, pump up a few numbers, and ffs fix the seein’ red/dead capstone/mod, they’d be in FUCKIN BUSINESS

but no instead

THEY LOCKED THE BUFF BEHIND A PAYWALL.

WHYYYYYY

#>:(#borderlands #im not redirecting my anger im legitimately angrey about this wat u mean #bl3 #zane flynt #but actually this is such a frustrating thing to deal with

25 notes · View notes

armsinthewronghands · 7 years

Text

Timeline of the Zak Wars

OP:

October 15th 2008 – Zak Starts His Blog, It's called 'Playing D&D With Porn Stars. You can see the opening post here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/hi.html

Archive;

http://archive.is/i44G7

Act One.

The Long Build Up/The Sex Wars

Feb 2010 to Dec 2013

This probably has roots in forum arguments in the past but it enters the public record in February 2010 in the Canon Puncture Incident and proceeds through to the Desborough Rape Threat Accusations of December 2013.

This period is characterised by the relatively long periods between each incident and the fact that opponents and arguments don't always carry over or fold into the next incident. Alienation and anger build up slowly, are sometimes diffused, but don't go away.

Most are triggered by arguments over sex and responses to Zaks gaming group (mainly women, mainly models).

Canon Puncture Incident - Zak defends his group from condescending comments.·

Hyung Tae Kim Incident - Zak argues about the validity of sex in art.·

The Maxim Article - Zak defends his group again, from accusations that their public profile is bad for gaming.·

The Carcosa Thread - This starts off about sexual violence in the game in question.·

The Math Skills Fight - Zak defends his player, is accused of misogyny.·

The Numenera Succubus Incident - Again, triggered by the presence of sexual materials in the game.·

The James Desborough Rape Threat Accusation - Desborough angers many of the same people with his arguments about the validity of rape in games, is then accused of making rape threats.

The tl;dr for all of this:

Zak S is beyond the shadow of a doubt the target of a long-running smear/harassment campaign from conservative gamers that’s been really successful because it plays on the fears of would-be progressive ones.

The campaign against him is mostly from “goons” (their own nickname for themselves) from the troll site Something Awful and from disgruntled members of the semi-allied “storygame” community who have issues with sexuality in games.

This is especially strange because Zak is an outspoken advocate of pretty much every progressive political position, his game group is mostly queer women including trans women, the company he most often works with--LotFP--has the most diverse staff in RPGs and the RPG movement it’s part of--the OSR--is the most diverse in independent RPGs. There are nerds--especially nerds who have a problem with sexuality--who have a problem with this.

Back to the OP:

February 2010 – The Canon Puncture Incident

The hosts of the Canon Puncture Podcast talk about Zaks game with his group. They say some things that Zak regards as condescending towards the girls in the group, Zak requests an apology and the hosts apologise. This gets spoken about on story-games.com and Zak comes in to describe the situation. You can read that thread here;

http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/11540/d-d-with-porn-stars-and-canon-puncture

Archive;

https://archive.is/13HKO

February 11

2011 – The Hyung Tae Kim Incident

Anna Kreider makes an argument against the art of Hyung Tae Kim, you can read it in full here;

https://donotlink.it/Q0Ek

Archive;

https://archive.is/zJBbm

Zak disagrees and the two of them get into it. Zak calls her a prude. Later, on March 10, 2015, Kreider posts her own chronology of her interactions with Zak, you can find it below.

I've been asked to point out that Zak wasn't invited into this thread, he just turned up, which is true, he hasn't been invited into any of these threads, but neither has anyone else? They are almost all public posts or they wouldn't be available to link here. This has been described as a scary incident to me.

Well, take a look for yourself.

December 2011 – The Maxim ArticleThe US magazine Maxim carries an article about Zak and his group. You can read the article itself here;

http://www.maxim.com/women/playing-dungeons-and-dragons-porn-stars

Archive;

https://archive.is/2cbyr

An argument breaks out over representation. Much of this happens on G+ and has subsequently been deleted. You can read a transcript of that (by Zak) here;

http://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/148473329613/filamena-young-attacks-the-dd-wporn-stars-girls

Archive;

https://archive.is/Iv58T

This was the best evidence I could find of the origins of an important disagreement that, like everything in this chronology, forms resentments and hatreds that pile on into the next thing. If anyone has any publicly available links describing or showing what happened then let me know.

February 2012 – 'Confessions of a Dungeon Master' thread on Storygames,This is an interesting argument over a game transcript from 1980 by John Eric Holmes.

http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/15862/history-of-gaming-confessions-of-a-dungeon-master/p1

This starts out as being between Luke Crane, creator of Burning Wheel and Zak, a lot of classic behaviours are exhibited here and, like a lot of times in this chronology it's based on very different perceptions of, and reactions to, a potentially sexual situation.

Zaks opinion of Luke Crane comes up again four years later in an April 2016 post below.

February 29

2012 – Zak Encounters Something Awful

Zak says that the enmity between him and the Something Awful forum dates from this contact. In his own words;

“The backstory on this is an enmity with Something Awful beginning with me attempting to talk to them about their extreme statements here, years after noticing they took Mandy to task for having extension cords on her wish list”

Link to his post is here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/evil-mastermind-from-grognardstxt.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/X91ji

April 2012 – Zak Banned from Story-Games.com

Zak starts a thread about the 2nd Edition of Geoffery McKinneys Carcosa book. An argument breaks out about Anna Krieder, you can read the thread here;

http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/16258

Archive;

https://archive.is/sHVHL

September 27 2012 – The Math Skills Fight on Somethingawful

Zak argues with the posters on the something awful forum about dice notation. During this, he is accused of misogyny in regards to one of his players. You can read about that here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/apologizing-in-advance-for-this-hey.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/3OxeK

This adds to the enmity between Zak and Somethingawful which he has said is the engine behind the Tom Hatfield Failforward article in July 2014.

August 3rd 2013 – The Numenera Succubus Incident

Game Writer Monte Cook releases his game Numenera. This game includes rules for a Science Fiction Succubus. This causes a massive scandal and argument (google “Numenera Succubus”) especially on RPG.NET where the thread runs for 561 posts;

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?697888-Numenera-W-T-F-Monte

August 5th 2013 – Zak Banned from RPG.NET

The succubus thread is what finally gets Zak permanently banned from rpg.net. You can read the exact wording of the ban here;

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?698051-Infraction-for-Zak-S-17)-Permanent-Ban

He's banned by Ettin / Paul Matijevic, which is a name you will see several more times in this chronology.

It's interesting at this point to take a look at the different viewpoints. Here is part of the argument for the ban;

"You serially derail sexism threads with bad-faith arguments. You insist that nobody can ever make generalizations about anything ever (even when they're not), then post generalizations. You pull out arguments that boil down to "words don't mean things" like that's ever been constructive outside the philosophy forum. You're passive-aggressive and occasionally condescending, you post anecdotes as facts, you tell people that things can't be sexist because you know ~females~ who would disagree. You're convinced that you're always right and refuse to consider otherwise, or at least that's the only explanation I can think of for why you keep making up strawmen to dismiss people who disagree with you (cf. the pass-agg "stop assuming all women are alike!" business, asserting that feminist game bloggers and others who disagree with you must be "conservative", every time you say "Tipper Gore" ever). You don't take anything that isn't agreement for an answer, and will argue in circles about it instead of making the positive contributions you could be until you get bored or someone makes you stop."

And here, from the ban itself, is the mods example of Zak doing this;

"Nobody does this research or even seems to ask for it. And they should.

That this idea is going to turn away more women than it brings in has no experimental evidence behind it.

That this idea is going to make folks' attitudes towards women worse has no experimental evidence behind it.

So if your only case against the trope is Monte is being accidentally sexist (via effect) it's pretty much accusing someone of sexism with no evidence.

The idea that this is even a sexist trope in Monte's hands is based on claims it will have a sexist effect. It requires them to be true. It doesn't seem fair or right to do that in absence of anybody trying to test it.

Me, here's who I can test: 2000 blog readers and G+ people. 4 figures of "I Hit It With My Axe" fans on Facebook. Mandy's fans which are like in the 5 figures. We ask what keeps women from gaming: The data we get has nothing to do with content and everything to do with a social environment of weird controlling nerd boys.

But, hey, that's a biased sample

Somebody do some research, rather than assuming all women are like the ones in your environment.

The closest thing we have in terms of experimental data on anything moving the needle of gaming concerning women is the advent of Vampire which proves:

Tim Truman illustrations of sexy vampires --male and female--attract female gamers, a lot of whom want to dress like them.

Folks who run conventions and publishing companies and forums should try to do a better job by publishers, designers and women by actually basing claims about what is and isn't bad for the community on testing stuff."

August 5th 2013 – Zaks 'open letter' to rpg.netIn response to this perma-ban, Zak posts an 'open letter to the managers of rpg.net pointing out the alleged sexism of the ads that run on the site n contrast to the moderators attitudes;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2013/08/open-letter-to-shannon-appelcline-and.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/sQpvo

If you look at the comments, waaay at the bottom you will see Shanna Germain, Monte Cook’s partner and co-creator talking about her reaction to the arguments made against her and the game.

This is also the first time I recall hearing the name Shannon Appelcline in this history. It will come up again in Febuary 2017. You will see that below.

December 16

2013 – The James Desborough Rape Threat Accusation

About 10 months prior to this Ben Lehman publicly accused James Desborough, RPG writer, of being "Someone who threatens their critics with rape". Several people +1 this post.

Desborough has been involved in culture-war arguments with this faction for some time and, in my opinion, persistently trolls them. The verbal violence between these groups is intense. Just google "james desborough in defence of rape" or any combination of those words to take a look at the shitstorm.

John Stavropoulus an RPG writer not aligned with Desborough’s faction or opinions, checks up on the claim that he threatened people with rape and finds no evidence to back them up.

Zak in his own words; “

The short of Jon's research is this accusation turned out to be bullshit even though 80some people +1ed it and it got shared all over the RPG internet.

Now Jon didn't name names, because he "doesn't want a witchhunt". Which is respectable. But I'm not Jon and I do think the RPG community as a whole deserves an apology from every single one of these people for confusing and distorting a very real and very serious issue of real violence that actually affects peoples' lives.”

He names names. Some people retract their +1’s, others do not. I’m not going to provide a link to that post but it is still up.

Zaks naming of names on this issue is used as evidence of harassment from this point on, in particular as evidence of him having a ‘list of enemies’.

Many of the people on this list appear elsewhere in this chronology, almost always as opponents of Zak I think. I can't really point out

who

because, like I said, its alleged to be an act of harassment or directing harassment towards those parties so if I repeat the same names then this chronology also becomes harassment.

December 17

2013 – Paul Ettin Recommends plussing the Rape Threat PostIn response to the above incident, Paul Ettin, RPG.NET moderator and Something Awful moderator recommends +1’ing the accusation against Desborough of making rape threats, he later also says he is fairly sure they aren’t true;

https://plus.google.com/115194116430466884350/posts/jefADpVt1rJ

Archive;

http://archive.is/mw3GC

.....................................................................................................

Act Two. The Summer of Hate

July 2014 to August 2014

As soon as it came out that Zak and Pundit were consultants on 5e, the attacks, accusations and counter-accusations come in thick and fast. This is a very short period of great intensity.

July 3rd 2014 – D&D 5e ReleasedThe new edition of D&D comes out and it is revealed that Zak and the RPGPundit are counted as consultants. This marks the beginning of Consultancygate.

July 4th

2014 – Ettin Admits Trolling This is from a chat log you can read here;

http://pastebin.com/nAzfnHbj

In lines 1174 10 1178 he admits that he does not think Desborough made rape threats but plussed the accusation anyway.

July 6th 2014 – Eric Haddock Asks For Evidence on G+ This is in a public thread so I hope he doesn't mind me putting it here;

https://plus.google.com/u/0/114899023370792587252/posts/c6aeERrjbAw

Archive;

http://archive.is/itg0y

This is relevant largely because of this quote from Sean Patrick Fannon (recently revealed to have been behind straightforwardly guilty of a large number of sexual harassment incidents) which gets a blog response from Zak later;

"The Internet is

screaming

with the harm caused, Zak; this very conversation wouldn't be happening if you'd not actively hurt and pissed off a great many people. You know this as well as I do. You've simply chosen to deafen yourself to it, demanding bullet point accounting that you can then dismiss or refute as you choose.

This is one of your tactics. You ask others to present evidence so you can play your lawyer roleplaying game. You have no actual interest in evaluating your actions or your impact. You are resolutely convinced you cannot possibly be wrong.

You are telling me what I need to know here. You don't acknowledge the harm you've caused, nor your capacity to cause it. Anyone who claims you've harmed them is Swine (or a liar, or worse). I am disinclined to spend any more time on this, since it is clear you've made your choice to stand on the treacherous ground of your own making.

As for being discredited... I think not. Your refusal to give even the slightest ground, to acknowledge even the minimal amount of flaw or fault, delineates your narcissistic arrogance in clear, bold colors.

There was an opportunity here, Zak. You pissed it away. You've discredited yourself, sir.

My credit will remain intact, thanks."

July 7th 2014 – My Defence of Zak As the abuse of Zak intensifies I write this post about him in defence;

http://falsemachine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/zak-smith-is-not-homophobe.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/b73Rc

July 7

2014 – The Pigfucker Post

A few hours after I post my defence of Zak, I wake up to find this article in which he lays out his own (by my standards, highly aggressive) policy on internet arguments, and also accuses someone of (metaphorically) fucking a pig;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/why-pigfuckers-fuck-pigs-and-people.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/9J0Ls

July 9th 2014 – The “The Internet is Screaming” Post This is really interesting. It kicks off with the quote from Sean Patrick Fannon above, then leads into an (I think we would have to say alleged) message from Zeea, who I think I recall from the rpg.net threads about Zak. I will include a little bit here;

So, I've spent a few hours doing as much research as I can, and I've talked to folks some more.

I'm not going to equivocate. People made accusations against you without proof, the accusations got amplified and distorted and repeated through the Telephone Game effect, and I bought into it when I shouldn't have.

................

I don't think anyone I talked to privately is intentionally lying about this. I think they believe it. But perceptions color memories, as does hearing the same event discussed by multiple people, and some of things look a bit stretched by this point. I can't base an opinion on stretchy-looking facts."

The whole thing is quite interesting and you can find it here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-internet-is-screaming.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/eXjOV

BUT

Zeea then (according to this post) retracts their statement based on the 'outing' controversy of July 26th (see below). She does not present new evidence, however.

July 2014 – The Olivia Hill Death Threats I think it’s about this time that Olivia Hill, game designer, claims that she has received death threats, including the names of her children’s teachers and phone calls to her address. These claims go on to become a major part of the case against Zak.

The only publicly available link I could find in which Olivia Hill repeats them is here in post 49 of this forum thread;

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/general/off-topic/1050412-white-wolf-hires-zak-smith-im-out/page4

Archive;

https://archive.is/WjTp4

July 19th

2014 – The Scrap Princess Defence

Scrap Princess, who is trans and who is a co-creator with me of numerous projects (one of several trans creators directly linked to Zak) makes a public statement about the accusations (which is blissfully short.) here;

http://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/just-for-record.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/jzaJG

July 21

2014 – Fred Hicks Weighs In Fred Hicks of Evil Hat productions makes a public G+ post in which he seems to support the allegations against Zak and apologises for not doing so earlier;

https://plus.google.com/+FredHicks/posts/SJHZ8Jc5SoW

Archive;

https://archive.is/KY554

July 26

2014 – The ‘Outing’ Incident

This is where Mandy, Zaks girlfriend talks about some of the trolls attacking her and Zak and uses a variety of openly available aliases for someone who later turned out to be trans. You can read the post here;

http://mandymorbid.tumblr.com/post/92910013775/more-reasons-people-found-to-hate-me

Archive;

https://archive.is/YyJyx

Like every archive in the chronology this link is only frozen from the point of this blog post.

Going forward, this incident forms one of the core pieces of evidence against Zak in future arguments. If you read someone saying that he outs trans people as a form of retaliation or revenge it is probably referring to this incident.

The case for the defence is that Zak and Mandy had argued with this person many times, knowing them only by non-gendered internet handles,and had no idea what gender they were, or that the handles referred to identities with different genders, when the two names were linked.

Zak in his own words;

“The person was not revealed to be trans until Wordmercenary/Tom Hatfield said she was. It was not public knowledge so how could Mandy or I have known?”

July 31st, 2014 – The Failforward Article This article is where the real bomb goes off. From this point on the situation massively intensifies. The article is shared by a very large range of people and is cited in nearly every major attack on Zak from this point on.

https://donotlink.it/VY0M

Archive;

https://archive.is/pi55s

You can read the clearest and most detailed debunking here;

https://www.seebs.net/log/articles/791/consultancygate-an-overview

Archive;

https://archive.is/pYOA8

July 31st, 2014 – The First Dongion Accusation

The Dongion is a blog posting sarcastic commentary about the RPG community. Zak has always claimed that he was not the writer of the Dongion but has said that he 'takes responsibility' for it based on the fact that it is in his blogroll along with many other blogs.

This tumblr reblog of the failforward article is the earliest I have been able to find that links the Dongion blog to Zak. It also links the Dongion to the Outing Incident.

https://donotlink.it/Wp95

August 2014 – “Get at him” Screencap

In August of 2014, in response to the spread of the Failforward article, Zak posts this. It is used in many subsequent attacks on him as evidence of his harassment campaign;

From the image; “hit him up? Correct him? Eat him?”

Zak – “get on twitter. tweet at him, ask questions, give links.I have a girlfriend in the hospital and 111 trolls to deal with please just either help or don’t but pls no silly nerd questions.”

Complete public text of the post (provided by Zak) here;

http://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/157572020868/complete-text-of-the-get-at-him-post

Archive;

https://archive.is/AUorP

August 2014 – “Destroy” Screencap

A few days later, in response to another article, Zak says this;

It should be noted that the link is aimed at a Metafilter thread and that you can go and look at this thread here, if you want to see if it was, in fact, destroyed:

http://www.metafilter.com/141806/Gender-inclusive-language-in-DandD-5e-raises-roleplaying-questions

Archive;

https://archive.is/iXics

Here (from Zak) is the full text of the post;

http://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/157572086858/complete-text-of-the-destroy-post

Archive;

https://archive.is/OLIFc

August 2014 – Zaks Response To The Failforward Article

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-totally-not.html

Archive;

https://archive.is/ZKdRP

In his own words; “it debunks, with evidence, every single claim made up until that point in every single venue”

............................................................................................

Act Three; The Small Wars

January 2015 to August 2016

This is a series of spot fires or low-level conflicts based around particular incidents. During this period we get mutual counter-accusations, the Ennies walkout and the Magpie Games Incident. So far as I know the accusations against Zak don't widen in scope or intensify, but no-ones position changes. This is something like a 'Cold War' period.

Inexact Date but probably Jan 2015 – The Ettin Dongion Accusation

Ettin, the rpg.net mod, accuses Zak of running the Dongion, which he calls a harassment blog and which you can find on his tumblr;

https://donotlink.it/m0RJ

Archive;

https://archive.is/pyQ7J

A link to the blog is here;

http://thedongion.blogspot.co.uk/

January 1st 2015 – Mandys Chainmail Bikini Feminist Defence Zaks girlfriend Mandy makes a long post on her tumblr giving screencaps of various kinds of abuse she has received-- including rape threats--and talks in detail about the alleged outing of a trans person. You can read it here;

http://mandymorbid.tumblr.com/post/106857162470/im-a-chainmail-bikini-feminist-and-im-fucking

Archive;

http://archive.is/w8Wvr

March 10th

2015 – Anna Krieder Posts Her History With Zak

Anna Krieder makes this post;

https://donotlink.it/gGQo

Which is a chronology of her interactions with Zak from her perspective, so now you have a chronology in your chronology.

It's quite interesting and I recommend going through it if you have the time and if you want to see the whole fucking cavalcade through the eyes of someone on the opposite side. It's almost like the mirror/antiverse version of this post with many of the same events from an entirely different perspective.

Amongst other things it locates their first contact in January 2011 and the the opening of hostilities to the storygames thread in April 2012, not the Hyung Tae Kim Incident in February 2011 as I have above.

Unlike Zak, Kreider never defines harassment or tells her followers not to do whatever that would be to Zak.

March 13th, 2015 – The Sampat Mob Assault Accusation

A brief moment of levity here to give everyone a break. Elizabeth Sampat accuses Zak of riling up a “mob to the point that I was assaulted in front of witnesses.” The “mob” consisted of two women: Karolyn Gehrig, disabled activist, and Charlotte Stokely, adult film actress

Elizabeth SampatVerified account‏@twoscooters

 FollowMore I RTed a blog post about how Zak has pushed women out of the industry. Zak riled up mobs to the point I was assaulted in front of witnesses

Elizabeth SampatVerified account‏@twoscooters

· 13 Mar 2015

More I'm sure rational minds can discern which one of us is an abuser. And that's the last I'm going to say.

karolyn ⚔️gehrigVerified account‏@karolynprg · 13 Mar 2015 More Saying"this isn't a great time, but I really don't like what you're saying about my friends Zak & Mandy online" is not assault.@twoscooters2 replies1 retweet1 likeReply 2 Retweet 1 Like 1

Elizabeth SampatVerified account‏@twoscooters · 13 Mar 2015 More @karolynprg Wait, were you the one who dumped the drink on me, or was it your friend?1 reply0 retweets0 likesReply 1 Retweet Like

karolyn ⚔️gehrigVerified account‏@karolynprg · 13 Mar 2015 More @twoscooters nobody dumped a drink on you. A glass of water spilled a full 6 feet away & more spilled on her than you.

https://twitter.com/twoscooters/status/576553462562840576

Archive;

http://archive.is/zFIHj

This is Karolyn Gehrig, disabled activist

https://twitter.com/karolynprg

The other accused member of the mob was Charlotte Stokely. Adult film actress

https://twitter.com/char_stokely

August 2015 – Red and Pleasant Land Wins At The Ennies

Zaks book Red and Pleasant Land wins multiple awards at the Ennies. Stacy Dellorfano of Contessa, the feminist game organisation gives a speech to accept the award in his absence and a few people walk out in protest.

Having adopted a conscious policy that trying to profit of of being harassed was more efficient than trying to sue an entire internet subculture, on August 1st Zak documents the twitter response to his win here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-reaping-of-tears.html

Archive;

http://archive.is/l687z

August 4th, Kiel Chenier talks about that incident and about the abuse he got for supporting Zak here;

http://dungeonsdonuts.tumblr.com/post/125851772599/i-am-so-very-tiredtired-and-angry

Archive;

http://archive.is/wbYjp

October 20th 2015 – Zak Mocks Olivia Hills Views on Star Wars

In this post, Zak persistently mocks and argues against Olivia Hills views on the Star Wars franchise.

This has been described (in the comments below) as "a blatant attack on Olivia Hill, using screenshots of social media accounts that Hill has said she blocked Zak from."

http://archive.is/20151021233535/dndwithpornstars.blogspot.de/2015/10/the-fetid-shit-stink-of-right-wing.html?zx=ab04705888fd97b7

Zak's defence, from the comments;

"I am blocked from Olivia’s social media, it is still public information available to anyone not logged in.

Criticism is not harassment. Olivia Hills Star wars problem is she hadn't seen it whens he made his years worth of irrational accusations about it."

Both sides get deep into it in the comments of this post if you want to read more.

April 11th 2016 – "Why There's No Tabletop RPG Theory

In this post by Zak he goes further into his numerous and deep disagreements with the Storygames community.

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/why-theres-no-tabletop-rpg-theory.html

Archive;

http://archive.is/lEwEr

I was asked to bring this in becasue people think Luke Crane is misrepresented in this post, and in particular becasue of the request for people to contact Lukes friends which apparently people did try to do. Luke is directly quoted in the post.

It has stuff on Luke (half way down), Cam Banks, Ettin and a few other people. You can read one of the interactions with Luke Crane in a storygame thread entry for 2012 above.

August 26th

2016 – Zak Calls His Critics Psychotics

Also knuckle-draggers, edition-warriors and sociopaths. This is claimed to be an act of harassment by some (see the comments to this post). If you’ve read this far you know that simple namecalling has been done a lot by many parties on both sides. You can read it here;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/3-dozen-psychotics-agree-go-buy-vornheim.html

Archive;

http://archive.is/IyQzs

July 26

2016 – The Magpie Games Incident

Mark Diaz Truman, one of the heads of Magpie Games and one of the few storygamers of color, a storygames publisher, writes an article about aspects of his gaming circles that trouble him. You can read it here;

http://www.magpiegames.com/2016/07/26/two-minutes-hate/

Archive;

http://archive.is/CDQkA

He is accused of defending Zak and therefore aiding a harasser. All the usual people arrive to do all the usual things.

Peoples responses and attitudes to this article become another form of contention which is carried forwards into future arguments. I mean, come on, if you've read this far you know how it works by now.

July 28th

2016 – The Invisible James Raggi Accusations

In this public thread by Mark Diaz Truman;

https://plus.google.com/+MarkDiazTruman/posts/2aRBa37wEtf

Someone accuses James Raggi, one of Zak’s publishers, of.. something? Then deletes the accusation. You can still see the replies to the ghost accusation but not the thing itself.

July 28th

2016 – Zak Talks About Mental Illness in the RPG Community

In this post Zak, without mentioning anyone specific, talks about how to talk to mentally ill people;

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/mental-illness-in-rpg-community.html

Archive;

http://archive.is/6S1d0

Despite having no names attached nor any claim anyone has disputed, this has been described, (in the comments below) as "an accusation that his critics fabricate and distort facts due to being mentally ill. I would argue this is a clear attack, and in the context of the previous posts can be understood as continued harrasment "

August 4th, 2016 – Zak on Anna Krieder

You've seen Anna Krieders chronology from March 10th 2015, now you get to read Zaks, equally long, response to that. And yes all of this is slowly killing me

http://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/148469806573/anna-kreider-wundergeek

Archive;

http://archive.is/CNj7B

..................................................................................................................

Act Four; We Eat Blood

Feb 2017 - Ongoing

Zak brings out a collaboration with White Wolf and all the old accusations are resurrected and combined with new ones.

February 17th 2017 - 'We Eat Blood' Begins

White Wolf announce that they have produced an interactive text game with Zak. Their announcement is here;

https://blog.white-wolf.com/2017/02/17/a-howl-for-our-bloody-writer-artists/

Archive;

https://archive.is/WGOMv

February 19th 2017 - The We Eat Blood rpg.net megathread

On discovering the news that Zak is working with White Wolf, outrage begins immediately. Numerous threads are started, the primary one on RPG.NET ;

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?798635-necro-Whitewolf-Hires-Zak-Sabbath-and-Denies-Harassment

(I was banned from this thread).

The main charges against Zak are;

· That he is a known harasser of transwomen, gays, minorities etc.· That he used a false name on Reddit, impersonating Shannon Applecline, the owner of RPG.NET.· That he named one of the characters in the game, Avery, after one of his enemies.

'Known Harasser'

See everything in the above thread as evidence used by various parties.

The SAppelcline Situation

I remembered seeing the SAppelcline identity on Reddit multiple times, very often after a thread was pointed out by Zak on G+.

If you can't see these well, they are from here;

https://donotlink.it/QZ7E

I was bothered enough by this that I contacted Zak directly about it.

He gave me a response with enough detail to persuade me that it was likely true:

“

A fellow gamer in Los Angeles (who does not want to be harassed and so does not want their name mentioned) had a reddit account long before I did.

They posted totally mundane game opinions there. They did not use their account to talk up my work as has been claimed, nor did they ever claim to be Shannon Appelcline or post in a way that could remotely be mistaken for Shannon. These things are recorded, you don't have to trust me.

Why did they pick that screen name? Well, since Shannon Appelcline was responsible for so much of the harassment I and the rest of my game group experienced over the years, when they were picking a name I was like "SAppelcline" and they were like "Ha! Yeah!" the way you might name your dog Nixon. Lots of people have screen names like "illary Clinton" etc. It was a joke at my harassers expense, but not an attempt at impersonation.

Once in a while I'd be like "Are you on Reddit? Can you ask about...." something. Until I got eventually my own account.

The night my video game came out, this person was at my house. We were watching a movie on one computer and watching Reddit explode with harassment of me and Sarah Horrocks (my trans co author) on the other.

My friend and I were commenting and fact-checking the smear campaign Hill and the other Something Awful commenters were launching (within like hours of my game coming out) and passing the laptop back and forth.

There you go.

One more thing: There's a receipt for literally every single incident but this one. And in every case it objectively proves the people attacking me are lying or negligent in fact-checking before making attacks (equivalent evils). Often two or more of our harassers have mutually exclusive stories so literally at least one of them must be lying or wrong. After 6 years of absolutely provable harassment and smear campaign it seems silly people are worrying even a little about what I did rather than holding them to account for things they objectively and provably did for all that time. If you think this explanation is too thin? It’s still more than we’ve ever had from the folks making all these endless not just “thin” but actually-disproved claims. When does the burden shift to them defending themselves?

“

Although the SAppelcline identity neither claimed to be anyone in specific nor did it promote Zak’s own work despite those accusations having been made.

The Avery Situation

Zaks argument is that;

.This name was chosen with no particular reference to anyone real.·

.The only supposed opponent of his it could be named after is Avery Alder, the creator of Monsterhearts and they had no significant contact until the Magpie Games Incident, July 2016 and that wasn’t particularly hostile (especially compared to all the other people we’ve seen so far in this drama). He says the script for the game was finished and locked before that point.·

.He regards the Avery character as a hero in the game, someone witty and funny and cool who saves your life, it would make no sense for him to name her after an enemy as a supposed act of revenge.

.The Avery character is directly based on Zaks (trans) friend Bailey Jay, with her approval.

.The trans co-author (whom Zak suggested for the job) Sarah Horrocks both approved the text and aggressively defended the character.

I'll editorialise a little more than usual here. Claiming making a trans character a sketchy hyper-sexualised slut as an act of aggression seems a bit mad to me since Zak

a sketchy hyper-sexualised slut and so are most of the people he likes and he, and they, have all been pretty open in both speech and deed about how they think this is a pretty great way to live. It's a bit like saying the Pope wrote a book and condemned the villain by making them a

catholic

February 19th 2017 – Stacey Dellorfano Responds

Stacy Dellorfano, who runs the feminist Contessa event, responds to the accusations against Zak and describes the various different kinds of harassment and abuse she has received, sometimes from the same people who are opposed to Zak, whilst trying to make Contessa a thing;

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+StacyDellorfano/posts/9DgcEuirpPP

Archive;

https://archive.is/cPSMA

February 21

2017 – Sarah Horrocks Responds

The co-creator of the We Eat Blood game, Sarah Horrocks, is trans. You can read her tumblr response to the accusations here;

http://mercurialblonde.tumblr.com/post/157525001658

Archive;

https://archive.is/AF2Mt

Which include, interestingly, an anonymous commenter, without irony, explaining to a trans woman what transphobia is and that she doesn’t really understand how it works.

February 22nd

2017 White Wolf’s ResponseWhite Wolf responds to the accusations here;

https://blog.white-wolf.com/2017/02/22/breathing-the-same-shadow/

Archive;

https://archive.is/BCvrq

May 13th 2017 - Still Eating Blood

White Wolf has released a bunch of information about its new edition. Kenneth Hite is confirmed as the lead designer. This kicks off another thread on RPG.NET;

https://donotlink.it/wvWo

If you've gone through all of this you will see the same accusations from the same people, everything basically unaltered. This thread got locked soon after I posted it here, with 290 posts on it.

Then, the thread from back in February, got woken up. As of the time of writing that one has 1390 posts. (Looks like that has been shut down as well.)

June 20th 2017 - The Mark Rein-Hagen Thread

Mark Rein-Hagen, game designer and original creator of Vampire: The Masquerade, opens a Facebook post about play-testing of his new board-game;

https://www.facebook.com/Reinhagen/posts/10155667328577240?comment_id=10155667453877240

http://archive.is/ZmKON

After a few nice posts, this comes up;

Which, as you can see, has 358 replies as of the moment of this entry. So far as I can see the accusations are all things covered so far.

August 3rd 2017 - 'Art and the Artist' on RPG.NET

Were back!

Thread opens with this; "If he was just some asshole, I'd still buy his books, because I believe in supporting a skilled person if even they kinda suck. But this stuff about driving people out of the industry, calling people's phones to harass them, targeting their families, it sounds super skeevy and crazy.

I'm not trying to start any fights here, but can someone give me some links or information on the above? Being an abravise person who use's sock accounts, and makes some dumb blog where you talk shit all day, that's shitty and all, but it's not really enough to send me over the line of "I'm not doing to buy your books".

The Mods then ban all mention of Zak. Then I get kicked off (2nd 3-day ban)

Oh and I found this cool list of every thread with 'Zak S' as a tag.

August 13th 2017 -

I am Banned from Defending Zak on RPG.NET

Text of the ban; "Dear pjamesstuart,

You have received a warning at RPGnet Forums.

Reason:

-------

Topic Ban

Since your previous ban, we've reviewed your posting history and noticed that you've been posting exclusively in threads discussing a permabanned friend of yours. Specifically, you've been trying to reframe these discussions around a blog post you wrote. Though you present your views as a reasonable, neutral foundation for discussion, your posting mostly consists of attacks on other users and anyone who disagrees with you. Some of these posts are simply drive-by speeches directed at hypothetical future lurkers, and don't engage with the discussion in any meaningful way.

You've made it clear that you have personal and financial reasons to continue this behavior, and have no intention of changing. After discussion, we've decided to formally topic ban you from discussing Zak Smith, including linking to blog posts discussing him. You're still free to promote and discuss any games you've worked together on, provided you focus on the games themselves. You're also free to discuss any other topic on RPGnet, and we hope you take this opportunity to find other threads you'd enjoy participating in.

-------

Warnings serve as a reminder to you of the forum's rules, which you are expected to understand and follow.

All the best,

RPGnet Forums"

Image of the ban;

August 15th 2017 - 4Chan False Identity Accusation

We are back with Olivia Hill on the following twitter thread;

https://donotlink.it/WbaL

Hill accuses Zak of having a 4Chan identity;

Based on the use of the phrase 'get at hi in this anti-Hill comment;

And this G+ thread you will remember from August 2014 (see above).

And including what I think is an accusation of Fascism?

Later on we get Zaks denial of the accusation

“

Of course not--and in what world does that tactic make sense? Like if you go to some rpg part of 4chan and go "somebody should get at him" it's not like 4chan gives a rat's ass or would do anything. Especially if they thought it was me--they hate me way more than him

REPLY “

“

I mean: Olivia Hill writing shitty vampire e novels that nobody reads is an ideal outcome for me, what possible motive could I have to harass her out of that? Let her do that forever. I just wish people would just stop picking it up and running with it like it's a real thing

“

(G+ link may not be accessible to all)

(This document gets periodically edited to reflect new information and clarify content about what’s in the longer links. Links are added but never deleted. The original draft of the doc and any the opinions injected are by Patrick Stuart.)

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