It's actually worse than Eric lays out here, because Luke Crane didn't just give his capital to an abuser, he gave the capital of *all the authors he tricked into publishing with Koebel.*
And when those authors pulled out, he *continued* to coercively coopt them to his cause.
Most of the authors who pulled out have been very clear that they did so because they didn't want to give cover to Adam Koebel or be part of his preemptive rehabilitation.
Luke Crane then claimed that they'd pulled out not because they had ethical objections to the project (the actual reason most of them stated) but because people (presumably those who don't agree with his decision to publish Koebel) had harassed them into quitting.
So, basically, Luke Crane deceptively drafts people into giving the appearance of supporting his abusive buddy, and then
when they're like "whoa, no, I didn't sign up for this,"
he's essentially like "THEY SIGNED UP FOR THIS but you all harassed them into pulling out."
Like I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that in attempting to publish his buddy Adam Koebel, who deceptively and coercively drafted his coworkers into roleplaying sexual assault, Luke Crane deceptively and coercively drafted his authors into roleplaying support of Adam Koebel.
And this would be bad enough if Luke Crane were just some indie designer who was doing a Kickstarter.
But Luke Crane is Kickstarter's *Head of Community.*
Kickstarter is how a LOT of indie designers support themselves.
So contradicting his narrative potentially has some *significant* negative consequences for the writers he tricked into participating in attempting to get everyone to support his abusive buddy's work.
Anyway, as usual, the one constant in the TTRPG industry is that if you're a white man, there's literally NOTHING you can do that's bad enough that other white men won't cover for you.
And in a very real sense, this is theft of the social capital and credibility of the other authors on the project.
Which is especially gross considering both Crane and Koebel had greater prominence/name recognition than some of those authors.
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I've been thinking a lot, in the wake of the Luke Crane thing, about the harm the lack of any real process for both making amends and for reintegrating someone who's fucked up back into the community is doing.
Like, to be clear, I don't *personally* give a shit if any shitty white man in games fucks off into the sunset and we never see or hear from him again.
However, I also recognize that that's my emotions talking, and not my understanding of how communities work. Because a lot of those shitty white men haven't been shitty to *everyone,* and may have given people who aren't shitty white men opportunities.
SOMEONE got drunk on catnip during the Zoom Purim party last night, ran around like a maniac, howled like a beast, gave his sister a completely incompetent bath, & finished out the night sprawled on the counter eating out of the compost bin.
My little Garbage Prince.
Like fully just face-down in the compost bin
Me: I can’t be bothered to wear a costume or get drunk on Zoom, I’ll just celebrate Purim with a nice cup of tea
My cat: *staggers in high off his ass, a sock over his head* YOOOOO WHERE MY HAVASHTERCAIS AT????
It's weird how both Christians who want to ignore Jesus's Jewishness and Christians who want to "reclaim" Jesus's Jewishness both end up being supercessionist as hell.
Like, traditionally Christians have defined Christianity over against Judaism, which means that they've treated Judaism as the problem Jesus came to solve, and assumed that whatever he did or said, Jews must have been doing and saying the opposite.
So in that formulation, Judaism is the problem, Christianity is the solution, and Christianity thus replaces Judaism.
I was thinking the other night, while watching Person of Interest, a show I love dearly, about our apparent inability to imagine truly benevolent, all-powerful AI, just as we seem unable to imagine true utopias.
Like, POI almost gets there. It has the Machine (figured, interestingly, as feminine), but spends a lot of time positioning the Machine as morally ambiguous. The Machine's inherent goodness and compassion only are codified when she's largely defeated by the evil AI Samaritan.
Samaritan is positioned as evil largely because it wants to eliminate the show's protagonists, as it eliminates anyone deemed disruptive to society.
For the first 3 1/2 seasons, of course, the protagonists have been eliminating people THEIR AI deems harmful.
seeing men say "I have only daughters so my name dies with me" is like
I dunno, if it matters to you, maybe change cultural norms around women taking their husbands' names when they marry
like I dunno, I kind of think couples should come up with a new last name when they get married
or we could have the norm be hyphenating last names on marriage, and when kids reach 18 they formally and legally pick which last name (which parents', or a hyphenated name) to use as their legal name