A Gift To Jojiro

So, since I won, more apologies are trickling in. Which is good: every public apology is one less person I might have to sue.

But a lot of people are doing weird in-between things, here's a telling example:

Once upon a time there was someone screen-named Jojiro or Ant Wu.

In the beforetimes, they liked my game stuff and started social media-ing me.

Then they were casually in a conversation and started namecalling at someone. I was like "Hey, this is a place for grown-ups, we don't do that, you're banned" and Jojiro was like "Wait, wait! I want to talk".

So, I set up a Zoom call. On this Zoom call I patiently explained to what appeared to be an actual human adult that it is not good to announce your issues with a fellow human adult you share space with in the form of namecalling.

Just like every other time I did this, it worked.  Because there is no sane argument a person can make in real time against "If you have an issue with someone tell them like a grown up".

This seemed to have an oddly profound effect on Jojiro. For a long time Jojiro started talking to lots of people in their life like fucking adults instead of 4chan trash. Jojiro's life improved. Jojiro made this claim frequently.

But also, just like every other time a gamer troll got confronted, they eventually backslid. They joined the hatemob and were extremely active in hatemob spaces in the early days, pushing for my life to be destroyed. 

But they would post conflicted things like this (from the OSR Discord)...

...where they are still very active.

After I announced won, they sent me this:

I'll open with the most relevant thing. I'm sorry. I fucked up.

This is Anthony Wu/Jojiro.

In 2019 I said I had a hard time believing your story regarding Mandy and co.

In the intervening years I maintained this position in more conversations than I can count. With the passing of time, I now believe that I was wrong. The process by which I've come to that belief is independent of evidence or the court case. It was a BPD friend of mine from childhood flipping out on me about totally false premises that convinced me - nothing like your situation, but she painted me as an abusive friend, citing events that didn't ever exist in reality. This is not ideal, I think, by your values as I understand them - ideally it would be fact-checking, and not personal hurt, that would inspire my apology to you. I've wondered if there's any point in apologizing, when my apology is so far from what you actually want people to do.

Oh well. You've said that apologies matter to you - not in a personal sense, but in the sense that you thought humanity was more normal, sane, and good when people apologized for being wrong. In lieu of that - I'm sorry. I was wrong.

You've also said that when people make public attacks, they should make public apologies.

I've not the moral fortitude for that - I've no plan to go and rescind every single wrong thing I've said about you. I've stopped, certainly, but I've done damage to you, and this is me admitting that I've no plan to go and undo the damage.

If that admission positions this email as a pointless apology - fair enough.

Still felt that I should send it.

Congratulations on your legal victory against Vivka.

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Proof below:

So Jojiro, I will be patient and generous with you again, accept this gift.

While you not have the "moral fortitude" to go public and apologize and help fix the problem you created, I did it for you.

Gygax vobiscum.

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A New Zak Print Project AND Red and Pleasant Land Is Being Reprinted

I won in court and I'm innocent, publishers have decided to start making Zak books again:

Fierce Ponies is a publishing company run by transmasc gamer Molly Scanlon and Ponies is putting out a new print edition of A Red and Pleasant Land!

And Boonie Dog run by Alex Hopson is, well, I'll let him explain:

To do my part to decancel Zak, I will be publishing a major LotFP-compatible product with him…..and here it is……

The setting is a love letter to Okinawa, the island where I grew-up beginning in 1978 as a pre-schooler and continuing to graduation from high school, summer breaks during my university and law school days, and every year since to visit my wife’s Okinawan family.  I retired from the legal profession about 10 years ago to the island as a restauranteur to help preserve the indigenous cuisine and a dying local culture.

For this setting, I pulled from almost every source available to me: Histories and folklores of various groups on the main and outer islands of the Ryukyu chain, mainland Japan, China's Fujian Province, Taiwan, Hong Kong, my gaming groups which are, depending upon the group, local Okinawan, Japanese, American and European expats gamers, my experience as a TTRPG player, GM, my experience as an attorney, my experience in researching and preserving ancient local foods, my 89 year old Okinawan mother in law, Japanese college professors, linguists, calligraphers, local karate and kung fu masters, dietician, folklorists, traditional hajichi tattoo artists, and lastly, my dear, wife. I originally conceived a “Japan Only” release, but decided to open it up to all, so there will definitely be an English version.

The impetus of the setting and theme came to me after reading a 2016 article.  The article discusses how archeologists working deep within an Okinawan cave unearthed a Roman coin dating to approximately the 4th century A.D.    What in God’s ( Yaweh, Buddah, Allah; or your deity of choice) name was a Roman coin doing buried on the far side of the world on a tiny pacific island, deep inside a cave!?! There are countless theories, but I romanticized (pun intended) that some Roman envoy had circumnavigated their way all the way out here as explorers, traders, conquerors, seekers of treasure or enlightenment; or all of the above. But what must foreign eyes have glimpsed of this subtropical island in those times? I pulled a few books and websites concerning the island’s history and found that in those days, the island suffered quite a bit from volcanic activity. In fact, the whole island chain was believed formed from extinct underwater volcanos in prehistory.  But those fault lines and resultant volcanoes are not really extinct, we still suffer through a number of significant earthquakes and active eruptions on the outer islands, as well as from the effects of new underwater volcano formation every year.

Fantastically and rhetorically speaking, what if the someone or “someones” could magically or druidically stop a volcanic eruption? What form of magic in the current gaming-world canon could do that?? …..and who would be powerful enough to wield it? And, what if that magic wasn’t quite perfect?  E.g. a ritual’s timing was off by only a few seconds or minutes??……the idea of the “Nebulith” was thus conceived…… a plume of volcanic ash turned to stone, mid-eruption..,,containing creatures from above; the living (and dead!) on the surface that were thrust skyward; and foul creatures from the deep that need now only climb the walls of the cavity created.  A billowing, vertical mega-dungeon that touches the sky, if you will.

The Nebulith is for me, a mistake borne of magic and good intentions that has created a physical, philosophical and metaphorical tendril between the heavens and hells of this world and all that lies in between.  A tangible, bi-directional ladder that may be traversed by humanoids, beasts, demons, gods and goddesses.  It has the billowy texture, color swirls, and dream-state magical qualities of a solidified cloud and the inhabitants to match.

The Nebulith is set against the backdrop of the island that I love and which:

-is the birthplace karate;

-is an intersecting port of ancient Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean (and possibly Roman!:-) trade, settlements, culture, art, cuisine, folklore and ideas that have functioned to produce a wholly new and unique culture that is intermingled, yet simultaneously, wholly individual and original;

-mysteriously houses the longest lifespans of any human population in the world;

-and, has one of the worlds few primordial religions still in existence.

In the game besides the fantastical Nebulith itself, there is a whole island to explore with mysterious characters, philosophical conundrums, bizarre encounters, 1000 year old temples built atop 1000 year old temples, political drama, pirate-infested coastlines and new bad-ass, martial arts fighting mechanics with weapons and leveling.

Compiled with LotFP* in mind, it can easily be converted to any OSR setting. Campaign or one-shot, bring your existing characters and weapons by boat to the Nebulith or roll -up new ones local to the island chain.

*For the LotFP crowd and those that like it, a lot dark and a little twisted, take the trails down to the lower Nebulith, we’ll have few surprises waiting 😉

Im really geeked for this new setting…. New player classes, monsters, items, magic, karate dojos, female samurai, ninja, pterodactyls, royal houses and that’s tip of the iceberg…..plus brand, new art, design and crunch by the one and only Zak S!    Zak games are back!

More details as they become available…..

Boonie Dog/AH

 

What, if anything, was your understanding of the phrase "Group titfuck bonanza"?

From Viv's "Dread" Character Sheet

Previously on D&D With Pornstars: We had a trial. I won. Details.

Today on D&D With Pornstars: A trial excerpt. Because trials are funny.

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[Context: Viv had claimed that I talked with a level of sexual frankness she wasn’t comfortable with etc. ]

(lawyer) MR SELF: Can you please help us understand what you understand to be written in the top of page 2-18?

MR SMITH: Okay. so this is -- you want me to read the whole thing from my pov?

MR SELF: Yes, please.

JUDGE: And what page are you on, two?

MR SMITH: 2-18.

MR. SELF: 2-18, top of the page.

MR SMITH: So, "re, a much more civilized means of communication." V stands for Vivid. That's Vivid's -- Viv's e-mail address. There's a date in January which I actually have a hard time reading. And it says wednesday. “Oh, fine, leave me to wallow in pain and braces and give myself post surgery boob rubdowns." She's referring to her plan to get breast implants.

(lawyer) MS. KRIEGER: I'm sorry, object to his characterization of what she was intending. Calls for speculation.

MR SMITH: Okay.

JUDGE: Overruled. Go ahead.

MR SMITH: Mandy -- then there's —I think like she's sticking out her tongue that -- I think that's what that is. "Mandy is going to school ... you guys get back, and bam, group tit fuck bonanza. Then you will be a lucky guy." Then is in all caps.

And that -- I don't know what that -- [reading viv's email] "Wow, better not have been sarcastic. threatens with thumb of fury. hearts, pretty hearts, xo xo."

Q BY MR. SELF: Mr. Smith, do you here today in 2021 recall seeing the statement you just read to us at the time that it was published?

MR SMITH: Did I read it in 2010 when I got it as an e-mail, yeah. Yes.

MR SELF: Do you remember reading it?

MR SMITH: Yeah. I remember -- I remember -- yeah. Yes.

[You’re not supposed to say “yeah” or “uh huh” at trials, because its hard on the stenographer, but I keep forgetting.)

MR SELF: What do you remember, if at all, was your understanding of that phrase "group tit fuck bonanza"?

MR SMITH: That we were like -- Viv was going to get breast implants and we are all having sex. And that was -- having sex and specifically —I don't know if there's any other way to say “tit fucking” except for “tit fucking”. I apologize to the court, but yeah.

[I looked it up: “mammary intercourse”]

MR SELF: Based on your experience with the defendant, did Ms. Grey seem easily embarrassed or humiliated about things of a sexual nature?

MR SMITH: Not at all. in fact it was one of the things that we liked about her. She's very kind of crude and frank and --

MR SELF: Pronouns. When you say we?

MR SMITH: Amanda Nagy. Ms Nagy and I liked about that she was very frank, open, honest about everything sexual, you know.

MR SELF: Based on your experience as Ms. Nagy's husband, would you characterize Ms Nagy as having been open and frank about sexuality in matters of a sexual nature at that time as well?

MR SMITH: Almost more than any living human, yes.

MR SELF: What about you, Mr. Smith? How open, if at all, were you regarding matters of a sexual nature in and around 2011?

MR SMITH: Very open. I had just published a book called “We Did Porn," which was a memoir about working in the sex industry. So yeah.

MR SELF: Real briefly, what -- tell us -- give us a summary, synopsis of that memoir.

MR SMITH: It talks about how i got into the business out of -- I was a working artist before, and still was, and then working on movies and meeting Mandy and -- Amanda Nagy, Ms. Nagy, and other people we knew in the industry by the time I had written the book. So covered a few years of the beginning at that. It also had art in it, drawings.

Mr Self: Do you remember a song by a Detroit artist named DJ assault?

MR SMITH: Yeah.

MR SELF: That was --

MR SMITH: “Ass and Titties." Viv introduced it to us. We were trying to play a game [Dread], and it was a game where people can be eliminated. And Viv got eliminated first, and so she started playing this song "Ass and Titties." And the lyrics are just "Ass, titties, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, titties, titties, titties." And she was -- you know, that was Viv.

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Court Update: Another One Down. (Plus Receipts.)

 

I Won.

So, I had a trial in Los Angeles against Vivka Grey—one of the people who dogpiled on my ex’s hoax—and I won.

This video’s a report on what happened.

Everything I’m about to say has receipts, including video footage of Viv repeatedly getting caught lying at the end:

• This was a civil trial in LA, I sued Viv for defamation (that is: for not telling the truth) and then she countersued for defamation, saying the same about me. The two cases were mashed into one.
• This whole process took years, so Viv could easily have gained leverage by filing criminal charges after I sued her, but she knew that wouldn’t fly because she was lying.
• The trial itself went on for over a week—nobody came to support Viv and—besides my ex, Viv had no witnesses except 2 of her boyfriends I'd never met.

It was very strange. Viv was out on social media claiming this is a huge trauma and everyone should support her and literally not a single person in Los Angeles could be bothered to show up and sit on her side of the gallery.

(I do want to say I appreciate very much the folks who came out to support me at trial and especially people who took the risk of testifying—hopefully they all know that.)

Anyway, everybody says it's almost impossible to win a defamation trial in the US--but we did.

However, there were some strange impediments to what we could do at trial:

• The judge put a time limit on how long we could go—I’ve heard from other lawyers this is semi normal.
• Our side was meant to go first. (This is also normal)
• So that meant our witnesses went before Viv’s witnesses.
• Now comes the weird part: The point all of our witnesses were making—Sara, Frankie, Michelle, me, etc,—was that Mandy and Viv weren’t honest or reliable people and their stories weren't true. However, in the middle of the trial I was explaining how Mandy was mentally deteriorating and the judge interrupted and said something like “this isn’t proper impeachment, a witness has to testify before you explain she’s not reliable”.
• This was rough—it meant what people who knew Viv and Mandy had to say were basically discounted. So much of what Viv and Mandy said was treated largely at face value, as if no-one contradicted it. It was really confusing.

Lawyers have told me I could’ve appealed the whole trial on this basis, but we won, so that would’ve been weird to spend all that time and effort to appeal a trial you won.

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Even discounting our witnesses, Viv and Mandy’s emails and Facebook messages proved they weren’t telling the truth pretty much immediately.

For example, when they claimed I forced Viv to move in with us we had lots of emails and other communications proving both:

• Viv was enthusiastic about the whole thing —including completely redecorating the living room 
• ...and Viv moved in while Mandy and I were in Montreal, so we couldn’t have forced her to do that.

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It was a total shitshow—Mandy admitted to perjury under oath and her own lawyer fired her so she had to get a new one and Mandy and Viv also made a number of contradictions in their testimony, all from the record:

• Mandy clearly stated multiple times that Mandy herself initiated every single time I had sex with her, and that our sexual encounters always ended when Mandy had an orgasm. 

• Nobody has been able to explain how this fits with the rest of Mandy's story.
• Mandy ex said that you shouldn't believe Michelle's testimony because quote, "She's a stripper they all lie".

• ...and then immediately admitted that yes, both she (Mandy) and VIV were also had both been strippers.
• Although Mandy had testified under oath that every thing Viv accused me of was something she knew to be true, when she was cross examined, Mandy turned 180 and admitted that actually a lot of these things Mandy actually hadn't heard me say or seen me do firsthand. 
• She was just saying that she heard from VIV that this had happened and so believed it and repeated it.
• So her testimony completely changed.
• Mandy also admitted to destroying evidence:

• Mandy and Viv completely disagreed about whether they ever had sex.
• Mandy very strangely is claiming that this girlfriend that she went out with from September until the spring and who lived with her never had sex with her.
• 
  
  
  
  
• ...and Viv says straight up several times that she had sex with me and Mandy--you would think this by itself would pretty much impeach them as witnesses.
• Although Viv claimed under oath that she I had pressured her to have sex with people "of my choosing" she then dialed that back as well.

• Between the two of them, they basically dialed back every damning statement they made in one way or another. 
•  Viv claimed--again weirdly and I don't know why--that I forced her to use sex toys, and she didn't like it and then admits how excited she was to get new batteries to masturbate with her...sex toy. 

• People from the game industry may remember that Mandy claimed I wrote a Tumblr post in her name that was defending me. Mandy admitted that wasn't true.

• Again, old news for a lot of people but Mandy did admit to punching me and we weren't in an argument when she did it. Her excuse was that she was drunk.

• Vivka admitted that the tattoo of her name that I got on my arm was her idea. Despite all of her claims that somehow me calling her girlfriend or being like "I love you" after we went out for seven months or whatever was somehow too fast or rushed or strange.

• Viv's attack post also made a lot of claims about how I was like an objectifying person and was talking about boobs. And, I mean, I can just show you the extensive video evidence there from the time in question. The people bringing up boobs are definitely not me.

My main focus wasn’t getting a big cash award, it was clearing my name. Because of the time limit, we spent all our time focused on proving what Viv said wasn’t true, not talking about money.

As a result, the judge wasn’t convinced that Viv (who had dogpiled on a few days after Mandy’s original statement) did any damage that Mandy hadn’t already done. (This is just LA, everyone argues that all over again in every other jurisdiction.

The net result was that the cash award wasn’t huge but Viv—as the loser—still has to pay all the court costs, which are pretty substantial.

This also gets weird:

• Viv is now trying to plead poverty and get money from her fans to pay these fees, despite the fact Viv repeatedly testified in court that she made about 30,000$ per month on OnlyFans.
• Now she might’ve been lying: Viv has consistently sold her content online by claiming she was in the top whatever percent of creators on OnlyFans and maybe she lied in court because she wanted to keep up this illusion.
• Or maybe she just spent it all on a house or lost on crypto, I don’t know.
• Maybe she never had that much money and was hoping I’d bribe her to shut up, I don’t know.
• Like I said--weird.

Of course she’s also trying to claim I didn’t win in any real way and that lying about being kidnapped and whatever isn’t a big deal.

P.S.

She tried to spin this in a lot of ways, including following the lead of an anonymous 4chan troll named “Skerples” in claiming that there was some kind of sanction against my lawyer.

So that was this:

Mandy, my ex, was supposed to give a deposition—which is like pre-trial testimony—over video chat.

I asked my lawyer and—according to him, anyone can sit in on a deposition—so I asked some of Mandy’s other victims if they wanted to see this: two women wanted to be present, her closest friends-slash-girlfriends from that time, Charlotte Stokely and Michelle Ford.

If Mandy lied during the deposition, they’d be in a position to spot it and help us ask questions to uncover it. So they were there to help.

There’s no rule saying you can’t do this as far as I know.

According to my lawyer in the deposition 

"I’ve got California Civil Procedure Before Trial volume 2 chapter 8 section 8 colon 698 quote absent a protective order, non-parties may attend a deposition indeed it may be necessary or efficient to have a non-party attend”

At any rate, Mandy claimed this was an attempt to intimidate her (she never explained why this would intimidate anyone or what the threat was supposed to be) and so they should reschedule and redo the deposition.

Fighting to keep Michelle and Stokely on during a second deposition seemed not that important and not worth paying lawyers fees to fight over so we just agreed to set up another deposition without them.

The judge then did what Ive learned judges do a lot, which is make one of the the two lawyers pay a fee for spending the courts time on something that didn’t work. The judge had also made Viv’s lawyers pay a fee for wasting the court’s time during the case as well. This is normal, it’s not some felony—and it had nothing to do with me or Charlotte or Michelle despite Viv and the 4chan trll trying to show it as some kind of smoking gun.

So, Yeah...

...that's the story of the trial. And that's why if you hear Mandy, Viv, or their followers say anything you probably shouldn't believe it.

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Another Theory Tested (Harry Potter And The Sourest Grape)

One Nice Thing

One nice thing is that for a long time I had no idea there was a new Harry Potter game out.

Nobody in my real life talks about it, nobody in my social media feed talks about it, it's--as it should be--a non-thing. Even among people I knew who used to like Harry Potter--even among people who now have hastily-covered-up Harry Potter tattoos--even from trans friends who once were deeply invested in the franchise.

But then--because I have to check on the worst people in games all the time for legal reasons--I found out there was one.

I wouldn't have thought much of it except--they are all talking about it all the time. Hundreds of them.

Congratulating each other for realizing Harry Potter is bad is now their personality in the same way complaining about official D&D's whole Open Game License fuck-up was their whole personality last week and complaining about me was their whole personality in 2019.

And the same way liking Harry Potter was their personality before that.

Lots of media is made by terrible transphobic people--but they're especially mad about Harry Potter because they fucking loved Harry Potter.

The Soft Smack

Anybody might like any thing for any stupid reason, but before JK Rowling revealed herself to be not just boring but also evil, Harry was frequently recruited by harassers in RPG circles to make a point about how bad it was to like cool, metal things like Warhammer or Jack Vance.

Harry was not like all the terrible nasty media that Old Schoolers liked a lot where push frequently came to shove and shove came to blood and blood came to axes and fire and people sometimes fuck or think, Harry was accessible, Harry was unproblematic, Harry was diverse, Harry wore sweaters, when people died it was emotional and earned because character development, Harry was Young Adult friendly and Dumbledore was gay and the only time anything was sexy it was in fanfic written by tumblr people, and Harry was, above all, soft.

Harry was a symbol for nightmare nerds of all that was wholesome and undifficult.

One RPGnet mod used to tag "10 points to Gryfindor!" when backslapping friends for outstanding feats of online harassment. Former-Pathfinder-employee-turned-professional-Karen Jessica Price once wrote about how since "spirit animal" was so problematic, we should all just say "Patronus" instead.

Which is so cringey that a joke newspaper that probably never heard of her repeated it years later as satire.

The Drama Club Theory of Harry Potter was simple:

1. Good people liked wholesome media where wholesome things happened and that could be shared with the children they would eventually have or already had

2. And this was somehow not a facemeltingly reactionary concerned-parent take but in fact a bold and progressive stance in These Troubled Times

The Failed Test

Just as the theory about morally improving games has been tested and disproved so has this one. They were proven wrong. Rowling's trash and so are zillions of her most devoted fans.

It's hard admit the club you were hitting people over the head with for 20 years is made of human shit.

So instead of apologizing to the people they attacked and talking up something actually cool like Adventure Time, they are rebranding as people so angry about a video-game no well-informed grown-up cares about that they have to tell everyone it exists.

I lay odds this exact thing will happen again with Steven Universe in the next 10 years and, again, no-one will learn a single lesson from it.

The Price of Painkillers

My ex- used to listen to the audiobooks and movies to go to sleep, so I know the story much better than most things I don't like.

Aside from the issue of just how every generation is going to need some relatively long and relatively literary fantasy novel readable by children written in a version of the english language they'll recognize as of-their-own-time, the only distinguishing thing about Harry Potter is its unusually full-throated embrace of the aesthetics of comfort.

Squashy armchairs, butterbeer, kids living in castles, bumbling idiot villains, shapeless outfits, plots so casual characters forget them because they keep going to class, authority figures who are not only good and wise and all-powerful yet non-threatening because old and gay they also respect you personally and say it a lot, domesticated goblins, wands instead of any more interesting or scary weapon, reading presented as the be-all end-all of fighting evil, and all this even as the stakes rise to death and genocide. All in prose so bloodless it made Peter Rabbit look like Les Chants de Maldoror.

It's as if the whole of Lord of the Rings took place in Hobbiton. The British genius for coziness-uber-alles given full vent over stressful social concerns like how to dress for a date or feed yourself--or anyone else.

If you dreamed you'd leave your shitty family and go to school and there discover you're really good at everything that matters with no work and have everyone decide you are an awesome celebrity because of your trauma and then successfully fight for what's right by pointing your finger at people and saying words while wearing glasses, Harry Potter is the power fantasy for you.

It was meant to be, by its author, a monstrous, thoughtless person who thinks she's being socially progressive by avoiding any invitation to engage her victims.

Again: there's nothing wrong with liking that story or any other--but wielding it should have always been suspicious. It's not a coincidence that all the people who did that as adults to other adults later turned out to be yes, actually, really bad at real-word problems and being adults.

It should be no surprise that, like Rowling, these people thought of "This conversation makes me uncomfortable" as a reason to leave it.

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