What Really Happened to Vampire 5e, Chapter 3.5: Interesting Feedback

 Chapter One  - Chapter Two - Chapter Three -

 Chapter 3.5 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6

So if you've been reading along, you know that most of the problems Vampire: The Masquerade 5e faced began with a small group of haters, most prominently former World of Darkness author Olvia Hill. She's responded to this unfinished series on her Twitter account, which, despite her being outed as an alleged abuser by her girlfriend, people still apparently follow:

Dear Olivia Hill,

I had no idea your all-caps views have changed. I'm glad to hear it.

I know the views you must be referring to because your anti-sex worker views were the only views I'm aware of you expressing 12 years ago.  Twelve years ago your wife Filamena Young and her friend Tracy Hurley smeared the women in my game group (receipts) saying that doing their job hurt women, then you and Filamena cooked up a fiction (receipts) that said the only reason I (privately) asked her to stop doing that to them was (bafflingly) to drive traffic to this RPG blog. I am so glad to hear your views have changed.

You never had anything else to say about me other than these views until 2014 or '15 when you decided to join in and encourage a harassment campaign, spearheaded by Hurley, due to my work as a consultant on D&D 5e, all due to anger at me protesting the attacks y'all made due to these now-abandoned views. After peppering me with dozens of smaller instances of harassment--due to the same views (which I hear have now changed) --you popped up again when Vampire: The Masquerade 5e was announced to protest my involvement.

In other words, you, your wife and your friend Tracy unleashed multiple harassment shitstorms online against me, my family, my friends, any game I worked on, any company I worked with, and any fanbase those games had, based on views you don't have anymore.

What's important now is what you do when you realize your views have changed. Rather than listen to me, I figured you'd more likely trust the authority of people who were your allies--who joined you in your internet smear campaigns. What do they say? What is the appropriate thing to do next?

They say this:

There appears to be a consensus.

So let's take a look at what you can do to apologize and make amends for the harm you've done.

First, you should publicly apologize to the women whose choices you attacked, (including several women of color--Michelle Ford, Frankie,  and Satine Phoenix). You should also privately apologize to them, so they know you did it--if you need contact info, please let me know. zakzsmith AT hawtmayle

Michelle, third from the left, has probably suffered the most from your harassment, for reasons I'm sure she'll explain when you get in touch with her. She's now withdrawn from public life and is just a waitress. Do try to be sensitive. Her email is missfiend AT gmail dawt calm.

Second, publicly apologize to Cosplay Deviants and all the women who worked in their booth over the years that you were attacking. The company itself probably wasn't harmed too much, but the women get harassed a lot by people who had the views you had before your views changed. They'll be easy to get in touch with since they all have Twitter.

Third, contact Tracy Hurley, aka Sarah Darkmagic. and tell her that you no longer hold the views that you once did when she joined you and Filamena in harassing us lo those 12 years ago and tell her that you have come around to the belief that it was wrong to insist on these harmful views. Naturally, you should also tell her she should also apologize, since she did the same thing you did and backed you up. Which you now realize was wrong.

Fourth, you'd want to tell Tracy that because you've changed your views about the validity of your 2011 attack, that my subsequent response--to call you out and say you should stop saying these bigoted things--was wholly valid and not any form of harassment. And that, therefore when I was announced as a consultant on D&D, it was a bad idea for you both (and Filamena) to claim I was a harasser.

Fifth, you'd want to contact Mike Mearls and everyone at D&D and say, retroactively, that the claims you made at that time about my response to your now changed views, were wrong and in actuality I had a good and valid response.

Sixth, you'd want to contact the literal thousands of people on RPGnet, Tumblr, and Twitter who joined in that harassment campaign, citing your claims and Tracy's claims as if they meant something and tell them, retroactively, that they shouldn't have done that and a major part of that is your fault for lying.

Seventh, you'll want to contact all of them again (it'll be easy, you follow a lot of them on Twitter) and say that the conspiracy theory you passed around...

(...the theory that D&D head Mike Mearls, by accident or design, secretly gave your name and Tracy's to me in 2015 as people who had made complaints about me) and tell them that makes no sense because not only were your 2015 complaints about me totally public, but I knew you'd been repeatedly harassing me since 2011. So what was there to pass on here? "Olivia Hill hates you!" No shit.

Eighth, you'll want to contact every single person who shared this conspiracy theory on reddit, on Twitter with the hashtag #FireMikeMearls, on RPGnet and on their blogs and tell them that you, yourself, personally know this conspiracy theory makes no sense since you and Tracy had been attacking me openly since 2011. An that you regret those attacks as your views have changed.

Ninth, you'll want to contact Mike Mearls and his wife, again, to apologize for your role in promoting the conspiracy theory that caused his duties at his job to be drastically curtailed and for the company to forbid him to make any public statements.

Tenth, you'll want to contact some people who might not be in your circles. The guys Old School Renaissance gamers call the "Troika Trolls", Skerples (an OSR dude from 4chan) and a few Something Awful goons who hang out on the OSR Discord--Erika Muse / IceQueenErika and Nickoten--and tell them that this conspiracy theory is not true and all of them should stop spreading it.

Eleventh, you'll want to--now that your views have changed--reconsider inventing the lie about me threatening your kids or that I somehow encouraged it rather than, y'know, doing the complete opposite of that:

Now that your views have changed maybe these lies aren't necessary?

Twelfth, you might want to revisit the idea that it was necessary to accuse me of being social justice bad in ways you know and have admitted I'm not, since you now acknowledge your reason for starting this hate campaign was a set of views which you subsequently have changed.

Thirteenth, you might want to contact everyone on the Onyx Path forums and tell them you lied about me threatening your kids because of a hate-on because of views you now have changed.

Fourteenth, you might want to contact every single freelancer who worked on Vampire 5e for White Wolf, art director, writers and artists, production staff in Finland, the US, Sweden, and elsewhere and apologize to them for ginning up a hate campaign against their game based on views you now feel have changed. You might want to give them all the money you have, since they lost so much work due to you, both due to Vampire being cut short and due to that line on their resume being permanently tainted by your hate campaign.

Fifteenth, you should contact all the Vampire fans who had hoped that Vampire would be a full-court-press product and be worked on and supported by the best Paradox could muster and not rolled out on a bed of broken bones due to a smear campaign lead by you, an ex-World of Darkness freelancer who hated someone involved in it because of views you admit you've now changed.

Sixteenth, you might reconsider the whole "Zak harassed me for not liking Star Wars" lie you told since the reason you decided to lie in the first place was due to views you've changed.

Seventeenth, you might want to contact my former co-author on Maze of the Blue Medusa, Patrick Stuart, and tell him that his estimation that I was out of line for calling you out was wrong, because you should have been called out because the views that you expressed were wrong and gross which is why they now have changed.

Eighteenth, you might want to apologize to the RPG community broadly for generally promoting the idea I'm a harasser or abuser and then lying about doing it since you started doing that because I asked your wife not to harass and abuse me in defense of views you now know are wrong.

Nineteenth, maybe apologize to James Edward Raggi of Lamentations of the Flame Princess for lying about him being pro-Nazi because you were so mad that he published me (a Jew) since your anger derives from being called out--correctly--for views you claim to have changed.

Twentieth, likewise you might want to apologize to Jews in general for promoting the antisemitic conspiracy theory that I'm not actually a painter and so have some secret rich Jew kid trust fund since you probably only decided to endorse it based on views you say you've changed.

Twenty-First, you might want to apologize to Zoe Quinn for lying to her and claiming I'd done something wrong in calling you out for the views you've changed and thus drawing Zoe into your harassment campaigns.

If being angry that porn stars do their job isn't being a prude literally what is?

Twenty-Second, you might want to re-think categorizing me reading your public posts as "stalking" since not only have your views allegedly changed, but you had to read my public posts to make any of the public claims you've ever made against me. Since I've, like, never spoken to you.

Twenty-Third, you should apologize to the entire RPG community for promoting people who agreed with you and helped you in these endeavors. Since they were based on views you've since changed you now know that all of these companies and designers--from Green Ronin to Evil Hat to RPGnet to Something Awful to Onyx Path, to a wide variety of story-gamers, including all the biggest names --took part in a massive decade-plus smear you started based on views you've since changed.

Twenty-Fourth, you should public apologize to your ex-girlfriend for abusing her, or, if you're saying your views have changed and not all accusations of abuse are always true: apologize to all the people you've dogpiled over the years in similar situations.

Twenty-Fifth, since your views have changed about the thing that made you decide to lie about me in the first place, you should apologize to me personally for claiming I was generally so dishonest and awful that any new attack on me, unrelated to you,  just had to be spread, believed, and acted on.

You want me to move on? I'll move on when you do your part to untwist the social, moral and political pretzel the tiny little indie RPG community has had to twist itself into over the years because your friends and your friends' friends and the people they hired and the people they LARPed with and the people they had moderating their forums and drawing their book covers and manning their convention tables all had to think up reasons it was somehow "trolling"or "harassing" or "abusive" to occasionally ask you to please stop lying in support of your evil, shitty, bigoted, thoughtless, fearmongering, ignorant, half-baked, compassionless, puritanical, vintage-Reagan-Era pearl-clutching right-wing SWERF bullshit.

Let me know when you'd like to get started.

Sincerely,

-Z

For everybody else following on the story of what happened to Vampire--Chapter Four tomorrow. No Olivia in that chapter, just her friends.

Chapter One  - Chapter Two - Chapter Three -

 Chapter 3.5 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6

So apologize.