Tuesday, May 11, 2021

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.
So apologize.


31 comments:

Zak Sabbath said...

@Fred

Deleted. Misinformation is not allowed in the comments. If you believe you've received this message in error, email zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm.

Emergent666 said...

Hi Zak, you said on "The Samiy Dushniy Podcast" today that anyone who wants to cheer you up should do so on your blog. I tried to find a way to write you a private message, but I couldn't find it, so here I am.

I'm just another Russian OSR blogger (https://vk.com/osrtd) who writes and translates OSR-articles (including yours) and released a cyberpunk city-crawl game inspired by Vornheim and articles by an Ukrainian OSR blogger who introduced your work to many people in our community. LotFP occupies an important place in our community, with it (and your modules for it) many referees started and are still starting to get acquainted with the old school RPG's.

I want to thank you for all your previous work and say that you are always welcome in the Russian-speaking community. In addition, I hope that everything will work out and you can return to the previous level.
Good luck and patience, everything will be fine!

Brendan said...

Hi.

Could you please stop linking Olivia Hill as an abuser? Assuming that everything the plaintiff says is accurate: It's clear that she's a shitty human, but I don't buy into the concept of her as an abuser. She would be instead a trashfire that married a trashfire and dated a third trashfire. The third trashfire put themselves in a position to be used, and was used. She Olivia didn't rape anyone, didn't batter anyone, and didn't threaten anyone's kids. That last part is a joke, though it's likely true.

Anyways, it sickens me that anyone would have any sympathy for Hill's accuser, even if that person was saying the absolute full truth. I detest all three of them. Yuck. I mean, you may as well say that she was accused of being not very nice.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Emergent666

Thanks!

Zak Sabbath said...

@Brendan

Olivia Hill is objectively an abuser. She abused me online constantly. You could make a strong argument she abused the entire RPG community.

As for her girlfriend's claims:

Either -Olivia's girlfriend is telling the truth- and therefore Olivia abused her.

or

-Olivia's girfriend is not telling the truth- and Olivia wants her guilt to be judged by standards other than the ones she (Olivia) proposes for other people: In which case, that's abusive. She wants things to be unfair.

It's bizarre you would -ever- question Olivia being an abuser with all this proof posted.

Brendan said...

Ok. That's pretty reasonable. I guess the main thing is I don't care that Olivia's girlfriend was abused. The rest of the stuff I'm pissed off about, though, and you can call that abuse. Your definition of abuse is getting pretty broad here, though, specifically the wanting things to be unfair part.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Brendan

Let me clarify that then:

If you say that someone committed a crime they did not commit, that's abuse.

Olivia Hill decided that people were guilty of felonies she knew nothing about on no more than a single person's say-so.

If Olivia did not abuse her girlfriend and claims as much, then she is saying "While I know accusations are not always true, I am going to dishonestly pretend they are" and thus knowingly commit an abuse.

If Olivia did abuse her girlfriend, she did.

But when you find yourself saying someone who -lied about a colleague threatening their kids- isn't an abuser, it's all semantics.

Olivia isn't a "trashfire"--she's not a bundle of mistakes or stupid decisions-she's a monster who, repeatedly and in cold blood, decided to lie about people to advance her agenda.

Jim Jackson said...

Brendan,

Olivia was the girlfriend's employer. You don't show your dick to someone whose paycheck you sign, full stop. Even if everything else the girlfriend said was inflated or faked, it doesn't change the fact that Olivia opted to bang an employee, which is afoul of several ethical and regulatory standards.

Zak Sabbath said...

It certainly violates the standards that Olivia's community would periodically claim to subscribe to.

But the nice thing about Olivia is: she's done so many other shitty things that are reocorded on the internet that we -don't even have to have- that conversation to know that she has to stop and change.

trentb said...

Brutal; not inappropriately.
I imagine Olivia will feel it's more of an attack than a suggestion for growth, but that's their hurdle.

Zak Sabbath said...

@trentb

There's no way not to do both.

People who try to use their tone to say "I am not -attacking- you I just think I know better than you what would be good for you" aren't fooling anyone--and if they are fooling anyone, those people suck.

Brendan said...

Last comment, because I mostly agree with you. Sorry if this is causing undue stress.

"But when you find yourself saying someone who -lied about a colleague threatening their kids- isn't an abuser, it's all semantics."

It's 100% the linking to the crap with her girlfriend that I don't like, because I find it personally infuriating that people care what happened to her (philamena?). Olivia may not be a trashfire, but Philamena seems to be. But I'm willing to agree that Olivia is an abuser, I just don't like the focus on the Philamena thing. I hope I didn't get the name of philamena wrong (I'm attempting to refer to the girlfriend).

Zak Sabbath said...

@brendan

Olivia Hill’s girlfriend is Francita.
Her wife (and fellow abuser) is Filamena.
And it looks like you should do more research before coming to conclusions betond whats in the post, since you don’t have a handle on the facts.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Mike M

I care because she has lots of followers and so directed a lot of harassment at me.

I don't know all of the details about the other stuff you mentioned--I'll publish your email if theres proof. I don't want to accidentally host misinformation:

zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm

mike M said...

its fine chum, i just thought you were citing her as a deeply credibly source which is not the same as the reasons you posted.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Mike M

Obviously she's not or she wouldn't have lied about me.

Zak Sabbath said...

@spaghetti person

Erased. No violence in the comments.

Simon Tsevelev said...

Based on what I know about Hill's previous actions, I do not believe that there will be any apologies. Nor do I believe that there has been a change of views worth mentioning.
From my end, if I am proved wrong, I will publicly apologize to Hill.

mike m said...

@simon

Olivia literally has colossal meltdowns every few months on twitter, usually they are completely deranged. Not even talking about Zak, Olivia has managed to become well known in basically every gaming sphere for her blatantly idiotic takes. Remember her rants about Cyberpunk? Remember her rants about the company she was working for and how they "stole" her character and put her in a sexy outfit? I'm just surprised she keeps finding work, I knew one person like this in my career (video games, it's not exciting just marketing, I help edit trailers and such for a firm) and our "olivia" was fired in two months. Said the company she got binned from was full of "white supremacists" and hasn't gotten a job in the industry since.

Zak Sabbath said...

@Mike M

It irritates me a little that nearly everyone who has ever interacted with her in any serious way sees her as a problem but I'm the one who has to write the blog entry and be the guy to take the hit.

I am really sick of tanking because eveybody else is too compromised to be honest.

mike M said...

usually you just lose your job and that's that, and then you're quietly shut out of the industry.

olivia is resourceful

Zak Sabbath said...

@mike m

Olivia lies on twitter and twitter likes people who lie on twitter.

Or maybe she just buys followers.

Zak-Chad Elite said...

I just literally don't understand why the fuck she tries to put herself in a position of "you are just whining about something that was incredibly minor many years ago grow up" which is completely insane. In 2019 she literally referred to you as a "her abuser" and a "serial rapist" and I guess she thinks it's been long enough for that shit to not matter idk

like she literally gleefully helped burn your life to the ground with m*ndy and now she's like "WOW, THIS IS SO HIGH SCHOOL" seriously why haven't you sued this psycho yet? doesn't she live in Japan? japanese defamation claims are prosecuted by the police there.

Zak Sabbath said...

@ZCE

As I pointed out in the last blog entry, the defining characteristic of people who follow drama club members is they don't check anything ever.

Example: Olivia said I printed quotes from my "victims" on the back of my books. This is SO EASY TO CHECK. They didn't do that.

Olivia no longer lives in Japan, but it's true she did and committed defamation while there and so is, objectively, a criminal. That may be why she moved.

As for suing her (or any specific harasser of the gazillions involved in this shit)--it's a target-rich environment. Even if you plan to clean the whole barn you still gotta pick the corner you're starting with.

Imagine if I'd started with Adam Koebel or Aura from the OSR discord? That would've been stupid since they themselves got cancelled so quick and lost all credibility.

David Parkinson said...

I don't to make some kind of jeremiad, complaining about a global decline in moral standards, but it does feel like this kind of behaviour is replicated in many aspects of the anglosphere (i.e. the part of the world it is easy for me to see). All the way from the 45th at the top, down to people making up conspiracy theories about the coronavirus or the vaccines, people can just lie in public discourse, and kind of get away with it!

Is it simply group-think? Do people see someone like the person you are describing, and decide that they are in 'their tribe', and will be consistently virtuous and always speak the truth, no matter what they do? Why can some people so easily be 'cancelled', and for other people the s**t will simply roll off them?

Zak Sabbath said...

@David Parkinson

I think Olivia is a classic case

1. She's anxious and scared about life and strangers, generally

and

2. Olivia thinks she got a raw deal in life generally (she may have) and she feels that the "other side" doesn't play fair. In order to survive, therefore, she has decided not to play fair either.

-----------


1 makes it so she is very quick to determine someone is "the enemy" (despite that fact that, in the sweep of living humans, Olivia and I probably have more in common than most people: Californians, polyamorous, RPG fans, indie creators, Bernie voters, etc)

2 makes it so that once you're "the enemy" there's no way to de-escalate, explain, or fix anything, ever.

------

You throw into the mix the entire internet, which is angry and bored, and desperately wants to find an enemy to work out their angriest urges at, and there you go. Olivia goes "LOOK! ENEMY!!!" and they go "OH FINALLY SOMETHING I HATE THAT I CAN REACH!"

And they have no incentive to ever be better or kinder or more compassionate.

Zak Sabbath said...

Yeah basically

Fear of Interaction With The Other
+
A Belief That Fairness Is Weakness

just about covers every shitty nerd interaction on the internet. "I won't answer your questions!" Like, really, what do you think will happen to you if you answer a question? Measels? Legionnaire's disease?

Александр said...

Чел, ты очень меня вдохновил, когда я послушал подкаст - ты очень крутой художник и игродел, и мне очень грустно от того, что тебя посещают суицидальные мысли, насколько бы ситуация не была дерьмовая. Никакая ситуация не отменит того, сколько ты сделал для игр у самых разных чуваков за их столами по всему миру и очень жаль, что мы редко говорим такое таким чувакам как ты (в особенности из-за того, что мы не говорим на одном с вами языке). С другой стороны планеты посылаем тебе слова благодарности за твой труд, респекты и просто надеемся, что ты прочитаешь и, хоть ненадолго, тебя посетят положительные эмоции!

Man, you really inspired me when I listened to the podcast - you are a very cool artist and game maker, and I am very sad that you have suicidal thoughts, no matter how crappy the situation is. No situation will undo how much you've done for games with a wide variety of dudes at their tables around the world, and it's a shame that we rarely talk to dudes like you (especially since we don't speak the same language). On the other side of the planet, we send you words of gratitude for your work, respect and just hope that you will read it and, at least for a while, you will be visited by positive emotions!

Simon Tsevelev said...

Observation. Hill's girlfriend's tweets about being abused seem to have been removed today.
Query. Could it be that someone addressed her with something like "bad people harass me because of what you did, it's so terrible, you help bad people to hurt me"?

Zak Sabbath said...

@Simon Tsevelev

Maybe. I'd hope it's clear from this series that Olivia has a long track record of lying, being abusive, and then trying to get sympathy to shield herself from consequences of lying and being abusive.

Gladwain said...

@Zak,

I know this probably isn't the context you intended, but I just want to say that I love the picture of your players in this post. Whatever people want to say about you, those girls look so happy to be playing in your game and that's a wonderful thing. I run a weekly campaign for four women, all brand new to RPGs, and the excitement and energy they bring to the table is such a thrill. Whatever you were doing at this point in your life, I hope you can continue to draw strength from that period whenever you feel down.

Peace, man.